Memorial Day Weekend in Photos (Fire Pit Progress)

Hope everyone had a very nice long weekend! Here's what we were up to.

Friday afternoon: two pallets of supplies were delivered.

Friday evening: trench digging.

Lower 18 foot long by 12 inch wide by 5 inches deep trench complete.

Saturday morning: filling the lower trench with paver base material and painstakingly leveling the bottom layer of paver stones.

Friday afternoon: making progress on the lower retaining wall

Installing the drainage tube.

Our supervisor.

Saturday evening: adding drainage gravel behind the retaining wall.

More checking to make sure things are still level.

Sunday morning: before we started working, this was as far as we got Saturday, with the lower retaining wall completed, but still needing to add more gravel and dirt to raise the terrace area up.

Saturday all day: digging and shoveling, transferring the dirt from the higher side to the lower side.

So many tree roots to battle, making the digging go even slower.

Saturday afternoon: still digging. Oh my god, so much digging.

Saturday night: forced to stop early at 7:30 because of rain.

Monday morning: still had to dig out the upper trench, lay the paver base and level everything.

Monday mid-day: the upper wall is starting to come together.

More drainage gravel.

Monday at 3pm: we run out of paver stones, with 1 1/2 levels left to go. We call it quits, because family is coming over for dinner at 5pm. Can barely walk or lift our arms.

Our new chairs and cute pillows we bought for the fire pit area, once it's actually finished. We used them on the deck instead.

Biggest marshmallows I've ever seen. Which we didn't get to eat. :( We considered trying to do a fire even though the terrace area isn't finished yet, but my BIL wasn't feeling very well, so they ended up leaving early, not too long after dinner. Oh well, the marshmallows will still be good next weekend once we're all finished and ready for a fire!

Still left to do to complete our fire pit area:

• Buy and install the last 1 1/2 layers of paver stones on the upper retaining wall
• Back fill the upper wall with gravel and dirt
• Put in a ground cover of either decorative pebbles or beauty bark (eventually we may end up doing a full patio with more paver stones, but that would require more digging and a wet saw to cut the stones, and just a whole lot more work than we're up for at the moment. So that will come in a later phase. Although we have a feeling we may end up liking a more natural feel for the terrace area between the retaining walls. We'll see though!)
• Make a side table out of a tree stump
• Put in some potting soil above the upper retaining wall and plant a few shade-friendly plants (maybe ferns, azaleas or hosta)
• Finish building up the path down to the fire pit
• Install landscape lighting along the path
• Put the fire pit in the center of the terrace area
• Arrange new chairs around the fire pit
• Bring down some citronella candles
• Have a fire already!

How was your Memorial Day weekend? I feel like I need another weekend just to recover from this weekend!

P.S. I'll be doing a full breakdown on the building of the retaining walls and fire pit area with more details, links to online resources we found useful, and of course the cost. I just want to finish this phase of the project first, before I add up all of the receipts!