After settling on a design for the patio structure, we had to seek folks to put in the patio pavers, and most importantly build the fireplace and stone columns. We reached out to several folks, with varying degrees of response, and widely different estimates. Suffice to say, part of what we were doing was somewhat unique, especially as I was intending to build the structure myself, and I wanted to act as the general contractor. We were fortunate to find two contractors to work with, one to construct the fireplace, and the other to lay the paver patio.

Before anyone could get to work, I had to prepare the site. Three key infrastructure pieces I needed to take care of—water, speaker wiring, and electrical. For the water and speakers, I chose to route from the same spot and tunnel under our existing sidewalk. We wanted to have our outside hose spigot be able to be connected to a line running out past our patio. In addition, I wanted to run a 3/4 inch conduit in order to run speaker line, and any future wiring. Both of these runs started at the side of our house in access panels, and ran under the sidewalk to the back of where our new fireplace would soon be.

For our electrical, I needed to tie off of the outside circuit from our basement. I drilled through our foundation to exit the house. At that point, I need to cut a channel around the future patio and over to the back of the fireplace, where I would run up the column and throughout the structure. I rented a trencher hoping this would speed up the work. The trencher did get the job started, but I found I still had a lot of work to get to the required depth to pass code. Once ready, installing the conduit was the best part.