Life Size Blueprints

The backyard was initially estimated to take two months and today marks the two month point. Let me show you our finished backyard...

there's the patio and the pergola...

the planter boxes...

and, of course, the grass...

No, of course, they aren't finished, nor did I expect them to be. In my experience, I have found that contracting estimation dates are 25% experience, 25% luck, 45% fixing others mistakes, and 5% acts of god. It seems this is true no matter what the contracting industry. We've been lucky so far that the weather has only interrupted a few days during the construction, the fiasco with the permits only delayed us about a week, and the mighty lizard gods have decided against sending us a wrathful Godzilla.
We're actually at a very exciting point in the construction process: they have framed out all of the cement areas. Now we can actually walk around the backyard and see exactly how everything will be laid out - sort of like a life-sized blue print. I'm very pleased with some of the design changes we argued for - they look like they are coming out exactly how we envisioned. Come Monday, they will actually be pouring all the cement! With most of the underground work completed at this point, it seems like all the next steps will be building the visual aspect, so things will be changing more quickly from here on. Stay tuned...