So we have decided that we need to do a little more work in the back patio area.  I brought in a bunch of dirt and did some mulch and black trim when we moved in but there is still a bit left to do.  We have planted flowers the last two years and really didn’t like the results all that much.  So this year I started off with moving the grill off the patio and on to some 12″x12″ block to free up more patio space.   It is also less space that I will have to put flowers in.  Then I removed everything off of the patio and power-washed all the dirt and junk off of it.  I couldn’t believe the difference it made. You can really see the difference in the pictures .  I did forget to take pics before I did any power-washing but did remember before I started on the last block.  So picture what that last block looked like as the whole patio area.  I just kind of thought that is what the cement looks like after 30 years, but if you look at some pics of the next day after it dried it looks almost new.  The power washer made a huge difference.  But the whole purpose of cleaning the cement was so I could put a nice red stain on it.  I would call the stain Arizona Red as it reminds me of a southwestern color red but Quikrete calls it Gem Stone.  Since they used some crazy naming for thier colors we actually bought a stain called Red Rocks, as that was the closest name to our goal, which is getting our cement a nice red color.  When I opened the Red Rocks stain to apply it, I thought it looked pretty Orangish-pink color but figured it would dry darker.  I applied it to the 12×12 blocks I had just put down the week before to test the color.  I figured if I didn’t like the color I could just flip the rocks and stain them a different color.  You can see the Red Rocks color in one of the pics and sure enough it wasn’t red.  It dried a nice orangish-pink color.  I wasn’t impressed at all with that color so we went back to Lowes and picked up a bucket of the Gem Stone color this time.  I figured since I wasn’t going to buy a third bucket of stain that I could just apply the Gem Stone directly to the patio.  It was pretty easy to apply, I used a pump sprayer like you would use for weeds while colleen would use a roller and roll over some of the pooled areas after I sprayed.  This worked pretty well and the color is pretty much what we were going for.  You can see the finished color in the pictures.  We still have some more work to do as I would like to change the trim from that black plastic to some sort of stone trim.  I also need to level out the beds and get a bit more mulch.  Colleen wants some new patio furniture too so we will see what happens. I will update this page as I update the patio.