Hello HGTV, it's me, Meghan!

Many of you should know by now that I LOVE...okay, I am OBSESSED with HGTV. Some may say it's an unhealthy obsession, but if my walls could talk, they would disagree.

This love affair with HGTV started about 2 years ago and only got worse when we bought our first house. When we moved into this house, we made a list of about 100 projects, 99 of which we could totally do on our own.

After painting and redecorating came the big stuff. The first big thing on our list was our deck...ahhh, the deck. I always thought I wanted a deck and I loved it when we first moved in, until we started to notice how bad it really was. At only 4 years old, this deck was ready to retire. Add the cheapest wood you can find (thanks previous homeowners) + 300 days of direct sunlight and you get a splitting, splintering, rotting deck.

After much convincing from our neighbors, Jeremy & Tenicia, I knew that we could take down the deck and then pour a stamped concrete patio on our own. This would take some determination and serious help from a few neighbors!

90 degrees, taking apart the deck

Maybe not the best attire for deck removal, but it was so damn hot! I had to bring out the Adidas soccer sandals from 1999.

Bobby and the jack-hammer. Those stairs were brutal! Jeremy and his son Tru made sure that Bobby was doing it right!

Don't mind the gigantic concrete truck and the pump truck taking up the entire road!

Smoothing out the concrete

The pump truck getting the concrete to the back yard! That pump truck was money well spent!

The almost finished product - it still has the releasing powder on it from the stamps.

This is what happened about 8 hours later. Hail storm at 11:00pm that night. The concrete would not be dry for 24 hours...

Bobby and I ran out there in the middle of the night to cover as much as possible. We only had 3 tarps which didn't even cover a quarter of the patio! We had to rip open 30 contractor bags and lay them all over the patio! The hail only lasted about 20 minutes, but it sure did leave it's mark.

There are a few mark's on the patio but only we know that it was from a gigantic hail storm! I like to tell myself that it gives the patio character!