So not only did we organize a wedding in August but we also added the additional work of hosting our rehearsal dinner in our backyard and a serious backyard patio DIY to get it ready for our guests.
This is what the space looked like before:
Mike had originally built me vegetable gardens out here but with lack of time and substantial sun and let’s be honest my black thumb my veggie gardens dreams just never happened. The area is a great space and so Mike ripped up his hard work so we could put in a beautiful patio to hang out in.
These are the inspiration photos that got us dreaming:
We literally started the DIY project 2 weekends before the wedding. Mike rented a backhoe from Home Depot and dug down about 5 inches around the area. At one point the backhoe wasn’t doing anything and we literally shoveled dirt into the basket and he just used it as a large wheelbarrow. We discovered it wasn’t working because there was no hydraulic fluid in the machine. Mike had to return it, fill it up and bring it back. Ask him how much fun that was!?!
This was definitely the hardest part of the project because he found a ton of roots to dig up and had to pull out the chainsaw to cut them out. Ask him about how he could’ve been extremely injured since at one point the chain snapped off… Thankfully I didn’t see that happen.
After the hole was dug, he ordered gravel (from Canlok Stone) and it was delivered one morning to our driveway. We had amazing help from one of Mike’s friends and our tenant Joe and we got all the gravel down and then leveled it.
From there Mike purchased a few bags of sand from Home Depot and with more help from Mike’s friends they carried one by one each rock slab (ordered from Cohen & Cohen) from the front driveway to the back. They laid the jigsaw puzzle of rock slabs and then filled it in with sand.
Joe and I hung some lights around the area, some tiki torches were placed in the ground, we bought a backyard fireplace that Joe put together
Awesome job, it turned out beautiful!