Preparing for Patio

(Wow!  3 posts in one day!)
Well as I told you, we decided to cut down a tree in our backyard.  It will make the future patio more open to the rest of the yard, plus I never understood why someone would put a tree right at the bottom of the steps.  It looks far away from the bottom in the picture.  But trust me, with the branches and everything, it was right at your face as soon as you stepped off the last step. 

Let me say, I am so glad I was out of town when Jake and Jake cut this down because I think it would have made me really sad, it was a perfectly good, beautiful tree.  If we could have moved it I would have!

 So now, what to do with the stump?  We got a quote of $85 to grind it out.  We also looked into renting our own grinder.  But in the end we decided to choose option 3 (which was actually suggested by the guy that gave us the quote) and that is to take a chainsaw and cut it as close to the ground as possible, and then just go at the remains with an ax.  So that is what will happen during final patio prep this weekend.

NOTE:  Our yard is hideously overgrown with weeds, it was like this when we moved in, therefore, it is too far gone for us to take care of it(we tried, it made zero impact).  So we are going to deal with it this year and hopefully next year we will be able to afford to have a professional come through the spring and summer to treat it.