It started with a $100 gazebo. A couple was moving, and the wife had insisted her husband sell the gazebo, rather than haul it with them. A sturdy metal gazebo for one-tenth the retail price? How could we resist?
The gazebo arrived in pieces. The roof panels were missing, and the instructions seemed to be written in Swahili. The roof was taller than we anticipated, so to keep it from towering over our house, we decided the gazebo should sit at the back of the yard.
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Ah, the yard. It appeared our home’s original owners had built the back fence when Kennedy was still president. The garden that once ran along it had been replaced with waist-high weeds. And the gazebo just wouldn’t look right without a proper patio.
So after convincing my dad to help, the two of us set out on the longest weekend project in history. A bulldozer wouldn’t fit in the back yard, so we dug the 25-by-12-foot patio by hand. One wheelbarrow load at a time. A dump truck couldn’t quite squeeze through the gate, so we carried 2,000 pounds of landscaping rock up a hill. One wheelbarrow load at a time. The 25-pound pavers were fragile, so we had to transport them with care. One wheelbarrow load at a time.
All along, our Great Pyrenees lay to one side of the yard and grinned.
We worked 15-hour days, from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., waking in such pain each morning, we weren’t sure how we’d lift a shovel. After hours of backbreaking work, we welcomed the chance to build a fence, plant boxwoods, or assemble the gazebo. And when it came time to lift the gazebo onto its concrete footings, we recruited a small group of gracious neighbors. “It’s like a community barn-raising!” quipped one onlooker.
When the gazebo was complete, we strung up Christmas lights and invited the neighbors over for wine. We returned to the gazebo nearly every night last fall, even after the air turned cold. And on the first 70-degree day this year, while it was still winter, I raced home after work to put the furniture back on the patio and surprise my wife.
Sure, what had started with a $100 gazebo ended up costing as much as a Caribbean cruise. But today, we can take mini vacations in our own back yard on a nightly basis.
At least that’s what I’ll tell myself this summer, while putting in a shed.
