Fast-forward...

Like I mentioned in my last post, I'm a little behind on revealing the progress of our patio.  It's just what happens when we have a visit from my beloved parents.  We end up getting involved in a million and one projects, and then I get overwhelmed with how much I need to share with you all.  Of course that causes me to run and hide my head under some pillows until I get the courage to face my blogging dashboard again.

But I'm back now...and before I even get started with the little projects we just tackled, I'm going to share our UHHHHH-MAZING new patio!!  The slab went through quite a few stages since you saw it here, here, here and here.

Yesterday you saw the wet concrete.

Then we had a stained, almost-cured pad...complete with hand drawn stones.  {Yup, those things are manually drawn by our concrete guy.}

Then later that night, he came back to cut the joints into the concrete.

Oh, and while all of this was going on, they uncovered the fact that our gutter was draining into this...a root-busted and completely packed PVC pipe.

But that was no worry because our phenomenal patio guy had his crew create a dry well for us.  I mean really, do contractors get any better than this?!?!

Sorry...back to the patio.

After the joints were cut, it was time to make a second step {we weren't happy with how just one looked, so they agreed to create another one}, and they also started to paint the crevices between the stones.

Then it was time to blow the patio off to prep the surface to be sealed.

And after the sealing process, we were blessed with this beautiful outdoor space!!!!

COULDN'T.BE.HAPPIER.  So what do you guys think?  Quite a bit better than what we started with right??

{Btw, if anyone in the NJ area needs the best concrete guy around, contact Alex at http://www.stampedconcretenj.com/.  He is THE BEST!}