Start with how you are going to use it
The most common mistake we see on a patio is size. A slab that looks generous on paper turns out to fit a table and nothing else once real furniture is on it, and there is no adding to it later without a visible seam. We would rather stand in your backyard and mark out where the table goes, where the grill goes and where people actually walk than take a number over the phone.
The second thing is where the water goes. A patio has to shed water away from the house, and on a lot of Florida lots the natural grade runs the wrong way. Getting that right is not glamorous and it is the difference between a patio and a puddle.
What a full outdoor living build usually includes
Most of the bigger jobs we do are not just a rectangle. They are a patio plus a firepit surround, a walkway connecting it to the driveway or the front door, and often a pad for a grill or an outdoor kitchen. Pouring those together instead of one at a time means one mobilization, one continuous finish, and joints that were planned rather than improvised.
Builder lanais are the other common starting point, especially in the newer subdivisions west of Gainesville. The slab stops a few feet past the back door and the rest of the yard is grass. Extending it out is usually the single highest-impact concrete job on a house like that.
Finishes for a patio
Broom finish is the practical default. Stamped is where most of our patio work ends up, because a patio is the surface people actually look at. Between the two there are middle options that cost less than a full stamp and still look deliberate — a stamped or exposed-aggregate border around a broomed field, a saw-cut pattern, or an integral color with no stamp at all.
Whatever the finish, the slab underneath is built the same way. We do not pour a thinner patio because it only holds furniture.