7-day patio

One week of work and we arrived at our final result! The crew wrapped up and we couldn't be happier. The flagstone patio is beautiful! We already enjoyed a fire pit and dinner outside (and the kids happily chalked over the whole thing). The river rock on both sides of the stairs really cleaned up that area (there was already rock near the hose but the other side was a flower bed full of ivy and a sad azalea). They took out the river rock already there and laid down landscaping cloth first to freshen the whole thing up. Turns out, having rocks hauled in can be unexpectedly expensive, but we're glad that we did it. Now both sides are symmetric, the ivy that we had to keep from creeping up the brick wall of the garage is gone, and there's much less dirt (and, therefore mud) so close to the house).

You can see, due to the glaring white, that the team also replaced our downspouts, swapping cheap corrugated black piping that was collapsing with sturdy PVC. The sharp bend on the left one is because the downspout leads right to a concrete platform under the stairs, so the pipe has to curve around that before heading underground. We are wondering if there's something we can do to make it less noticeable but I imagine a few months of rain and dirt might do the job for us.

Here's another view of the s-bend downspout attachment and also all this space under our stairs that was totally blocked by a mostly dead, leggy azalea. We don't know what we'll store under there, but it is definitely usable space, especially after we pressure wash it well.

As a reminder, here's what it all looked like before we began, with the azalea circled in yellow:

I couldn't resist cutting to the end to show off the final product, but here are some "process" photos. The landscaping cloth under the river rocks are visible, as is the smoke coming off the blade used to cut the flagstones into this beautiful pattern. The team was really careful, going back over the stones to make sure they were firm before applying polymeric sand and finishing the whole thing off:

Stay tuned--we have more plans for the patio and also a second project to show off next time.