I've finished everything that needed (or that I wanted) changing, except for painting the fence. I painted the light fixtures, I cleaned up and removed countless bags of wood chips that had been blown all over the place and/or been washed along the side of the house and mixed with rocks. I brought in new rock for the drainage area, new rock for the window wells, and brought in a couple truck loads of gorilla hair mulch. I obviously trimmed all the bushes and weeded the property, restored the lawn back to its pre-dog phase, ripped out two trees and planted a new maple...and FINALLY, decided to end the summer with putting in a paver patio over the concrete that had been stained by fertilizer rust.
If that seems like a lot of work, it was. The hardest project was the patio. It took five trips in my truck to unload and load 900 pavers. The entire project took me five solid days to complete; four of them when I was on vacation. The first four days I was able to get the pattern down and 99% of the bricks glued down over the existing concrete slab. Yesterday it took me an entire day to cut the bricks around the edges and pillars. I did all of the cutting with my miter saw and a blade from Home Depot. It was the same cost as renting a saw for a day, but now I have my own blade should I need to cut something else in the future.
The rest of the summer I'll just keep up with the maintenance part of the yard and turn my attention to the inside of the house. We haven't even put up a single picture inside, since I've been so focused on the exterior. The other say at the dinner table Julia complimented me and said, "you're so much more talented than all the other Dads around". Yesterday, just for saying that to me, I let Julia put down the last brick...
