Well, we finally did it.

Saturday morning we went to Xteriors Factory Outlet in Ashland to be educated on ways of paving stones. We've decided instead of building a wooden (or plumber) deck, that we're going to install stone pavers. Xteriors offers do-it-yourself classes every Saturday morning and we finally had a free Saturday to go up there.

Before	Phase 1

After talking with the guy and getting a quote we decided to go ahead and get to work. A trip out to Home Depot and Lowes for the necessary tools and we were ready to start. Hopefully next weekend our stones and sand can delivered next weekend so we don't end up with a muddy mess in our backyard. But for now, we went ahead and did the initial excavating to get a jump start on things

About 4pm we started digging. 3 hours later, several trash cans full of dirt and sore bodies, we were finally finished. We did it the ghetto way and used our trash can as a wheelbarrow. And where did we dump the grass and dirt? In the large valleys down the hill behind our house!

So now our backyard looks like it did when we first moved in. Oh well, this is going to be cool.