Let me start from the very beginning (which, according to Julie Andrews, is a very good place to start).

A few weeks ago when we first bought the flip, the patio was frightening:

I don’t know which was scarier – the blue outdoor carpeting, the green plastic roofing, the dark and dingy screens, or the confining peach brick wall?  Take your pick.  Clearly, it all had to go.

Once demo was complete, we were left with this worn concrete pad with remnants of the adhesive from the blue outdoor carpet – not too pretty to look at.

We considered our options.  If we stained it, we’d have to grind down the concrete to get rid of the adhesive, and that still wouldn’t fix the few cracks in the slab.  Same thing for painting.  Stamping the concrete would be too expensive, and wasn’t really the look we were going for.  That left tiling the concrete pad – but how expensive would that be?

Our first bid that we got from our tile guy was high – like sky-high.  We were in a panic, what were we going to do to make the patio live up to the rest of the backyard?  My hubby instantly went into bargain-hunter mode – it’s one of his strong suits.  After a day of phone calls, he got a bid for less than a 1/4 of our tile guy’s original bid – score!!!!

But before the tiling extravaganza could begin, we needed some tile!  We headed off to this place, which is the same stone yard where we bought the Austin stone for our fab fireplace:

Look at all of the goodies!!!  We cute right to the chase and headed over towards the Oklahoma flagstone – we wanted to use the same stone for the patio as we did for the coping on the pool so that the pool and patio would look totally cohesive.

Do you think we found enough stone??

We stuck our name on this ton of 1 inch thick flagstone.   1 inch flag is perfect for tiling over an existing concrete pad – any thicker and it’s difficult to work with.  However, you wouldn’t want to lay these thin babies straight on the ground without the support of concrete as flagstone is brittle and could break.

The next day, my lovely hubby borrowed a truck and brought this ton of precious cargo back to the flip:

Soon after, our new tile guy was picking the perfect stones and laying them out for a dry fit:

A few hours and buckets of thinset later, our patio looked like this!!

We ran off to Home Depot to buy 8 bags of Polyblend sanded grout in Fawn – the perfect match for the pool coping.  Here’s the patio all grouted and gorgeous:

A few days later, we wetted down the patio and got to scrubbing with a long-handled broom – this was to remove the fine layer of grout that dried on top of the flagstone.

And now the patio looks like this!!  I’m in love.

So, what’s the verdict?  Do you guys like it?  What kind of outdoor space do you have at your crib?