My wife and I have long had a plan to revamp our backyard. When we bought our house, the backyard was kind of a jungle with overgrown trees and shrubs. However, it also has a great flat yard with lots of shade, which is really nice in the hot Atlanta summers.

Here are some pics of what the backyard looked like when we moved in:

Over the last several years, I have slowly removed overgrown shrubs and trees (including one tree that decided to fall down!) and planted some new plants.

In the Summer of 2023, we decided to revamp the patio area. We had a stone patio that was slowly falling apart and our backyard did not drain well in the heavy Atlanta summer thunderstorms. Our dream was to create an outdoor space where we could spend time together as a family and host other families and friends. We wanted an outdoor fireplace and kitchen with a built in grill. We worked with a landscape architect and hardscaping contractor to design and build a new patio and plant some new plants. While I didn’t build or plant anything, I did design the fireplace and built in grill.

My inspiration was pictures I found on Houzz of fireplaces with benches on the sides and storage for firewood underneath. The designs evolved over the project as I worked with the hardscaping contractor to fine-tune the dimensions based on what was needed to build the fireplace and kitchen safely.

[add pics of the design documents]

Once the design was ready and we picked out all the materials, we got to work. The team demoed the old patio and dug trenches to install a new drainage system that channels water from the gutters all the way down to the street.

Then they poured footings for the fireplace and grill and a new concrete slab for the patio.

The next step was to build the fireplace and benches, which was the most complicated part of the whole project. They turned out really, really well.

Once the fireplace was done, the team laid the Pennsylvania Bluestone patio. We used what’s called a Versailles random stone pattern with 4 different sizes of stone. We also left an 18” border between the patio and the house to plant ferns later on.