When we first bought our house last year, it was practically begging for an amazing backyard patio. We considered putting one in right away, but figured we’d first live in the house for a while to see how we really used the backyard. And, let’s be honest, there was the whole budget issue too since we’d just bought a house and had already tackled big renovations in the living room and dining room most notably.  As it turns out, we lived in our backyard all last summer. Long, lazy dinners that lasted well into the evening, copious bocce ball matches, the grilling of numerous homemade pizzas and the construction of one very fun homemade slip ‘n slide defined our summer days. By the end of summer, the patch of grass closest to the house was brown and beaten into oblivion from being constantly trampled over and we knew constructing a patio would be a top priority come spring of this year. Then spring came and it didn’t stop raining. For months and months and months. (Which, no, is not our normal weather pattern.) That derailed our “must have a patio by Memorial Day weekend” timeline, but sure enough come early July we were finally ready to begin construction. After one seriously intense month of work (which so many of you followed along with on Instagram Stories), our backyard makeover is now just about complete as of a few weeks ago and we’ve been loving using living in this space. It feels like a huge addition to the back of our house and we just can’t get enough of oohing and aahing over the transformation. So today, I have all the before and after photos for you! Plus a few photos of the construction process, too, just for kicks. Scroll through for all the details and chime in below with any questions.