Building Our New Home

September 5th & 6th, 2007 - New patio!!

Better late than never! Pictures of the new patio..
It is stamped and dyed concrete, measuring around 25'x16'. We actually made calls to like 5-6 different contractors. We ony got three call backs. In order to pay for the patio, we really required some type of option available for financing. The first contractor had no available plans. The second actually came out to our house to give us a quote. The problem was that the quote was pretty high, and the guy seemed pretty indifferent about the job. It really sounded like he did this as a side hobby or something. The third, we met over the weekend. The guy came with 4 photo albums for us to see all of their work. He came prepared with a color palette and everything. He quoted us a reasonable price and offered 12 months same as cash financing. We didn't jump on it right away, but we did eventually go with them.

When we met with him a second time we had to actually pick patterns and colors. The difficult part was trying to choose colors that would combine to what we envisioned the patio to look like. Every color had a different purpose. We had to choose combinations that would make up not only the base color of the concrete, but also what would come out in the crevices. Not only that, but we had to choose a "release" color that would shade the border.

I believe the final colors were the folowing:

• Border color - Domino, Blue Ash & Magnet


• Integral - Slate Gray


• Color Hardeners - Blue Fog, Green Slates & Antique White


• Release - Brown Derby

The pattern was Ashler Slate with an Acanthus Leaf Border.

Although it turned out awesome...just a couple of gripes. After we received the original quote, a "surprise" charge was assessed if we decided to do the 12-months financing. I think it was like $200... The other gripe was that the final charge turned out to be a little more than originally quote. We probably should have questioned it, but we figured it was a tax charge...and if not, then we didn't want to get assessed a "tax" charge on top of the higher price. It seems like there may have been some "shadiness" going on.

On the other hand, we did take some final measurement and the patio and it turned out to be about 40 sq feet larger than we had planned...so it sorta evened out.

Anyways, in retrospect, we are really happy with it so far. It's nice to be able to sit out back and enjoy the summer.. what is left of it!

posted by blimpy @ 6:14 PM