This is turning into a BIG project!!!

In my last post I told you that Krystal and I have got plans for a really cool project (and we have!) But... Miss Krystal has gone off camping with one of her friends and Dave has come to stay for a little while SO... I've started on another home project that I've been planning... a new patio area!

The plan was to pull out the clothesline and put it around the other side of the house where it will get more sun and the afternoon breezes, pull up the cobblestones and lay concrete and then finish off with a little herb garden... sounds simple enough right??? WELL... it's gone from being a little project to something quite dramatic... so here's the photo diary of the last two days :)

Day 1: I had to take the 'before' shots so that you could see what I was talking about. Please note that I didn't do the tidy up before taking the photos LOL Here's what the patio area looked like yesterday morning:

Looks all very innocent doesn't it??? Well let's just say that looks can be deceiving!!! I started off pulling out all the ivy that had overtaken the garden and pulling out the grape vines that were choking all the plants. Next we started on the pungas because they were getting a bit out of control. It seems the last owners thought that pungas would make a great retaining wall... NOT!!! A few of them had rotted away and the next thing we knew this happened:That of course means that I need to put up at least part of a retaining wall... so while we were at it I decided that we would trim all the pungas back to the same height because they've been a pain all winter and they were blocking out heaps of light and this is what we ended up with:It's amazing how much more light is coming into the patio area now! The funny thing though is once you start on a project and you can see what you're dealing with you sometimes find that there's more to do than you thought.

I knew that the grape vine was really overgrown but when we cleared the top it looked even worse so we got stuck in and started taking out the rest of it:By the end of the afternoon the patio area looked more like a bomb site! There was even one tree stump that we ended up pulling out using a rope attached to the tow bar of Dave's car!

Day 2: We started off really well this morning! First thing we did was pull up the cobbles from around the washing line and pulled it out:

Then Dave cut a hole in the concrete on the other side of the house and dug out the hole... I've discovered that it's actually really handy having a man around the place :)Then he made up some concrete and got the washing line level and adjusted the height a bit!! Woohoo... no more walking into it!Next it was time to clean up some of the stuff we pulled out yesterday! We were so busy that we didn't even notice how much we were pulling out but it built up into a huge mound really quickly... we were amazed at how much we managed to get onto the trailer (thanks for the loan of the trailer Tony!)By the time we finished the patio area looked a lot better and check out the new view!By the afternoon all our energy levels were completely zapped so we decided to have a Sunday afternoon video session... I'm feeling heaps better now and ready for another busy day tomorrow. I'm going to do my best to keep this updated daily while we're working on the project so please leave us some encouraging comments :)