Patio Redo

It seems as though my teacher blog has turned into a little home renovation blog for the summer. I guess that's what happens when HGTV and the DIY channel are constantly on in your house. I promise I'll get back to school stuff sooner than I would like (in fact I have some district training tomorrow that has got me wondering how in the world it's already July 10th.)

Our newest project was redoing our back patio. We've known that we wanted to change it since we first moved in. We thought about building a low deck over the patio, and we also found some faux deck pieces at IKEA that we liked, but this summer we finally decided: let's just add on to the existing patio. After a couple of estimates for concrete that made our jaws hit the floor (sorry- we're not paying thousands of dollars for a few feet of concrete), we decided to do DIY patio pavers.


Here's how it originally looked:

Our previous set up involved a lot of "oh hey that's on sale let's get it now" which is why there is a random gazebo for the grill in the grass. We had lots of trips to Home Depot, a long conversation with an employee, and watched quite a few videos to finally get the steps down.

We started with shoveling out all of the grass and digging down 2 1/2 inches to include room for all of the materials in order for it to be level with our existing patio:

Then we put down a weed barrier to prevent any weed growth from getting to the pavers.

(Forgot pictures for the next two steps)
We put down about a half inch of paver base sand and tampered it down to make it flat and slope away from the house. Then we found these awesome paver bases that would take the place of having to use a lot of gravel. You just slap them down and lay the paver right on top. You can find out more about these miracle bases here!

After the setup, we finally laid down seventy 17.5 pound pavers. Y'all this was hard work. We don't have a truck so we loaded down my SUV and Mr. R's clown car with hundreds of pounds of material. We made over 10 trips to Home Depot and met a nice couple along the way who were doing the same project as us. I have to give it to Mr. R for this project. I can't tell you how tiring it was to do this work in 91 degree heat. When I would throw in the towel and go in for a rest, he stayed out there working so we could finish in our two day goal. You da real MVP, Mr. R.

After laying the pavers, we filled in the gaps with permasand, sprayed it with water to harden and then had to wait 72 hours for it to cure. Today was the day to move the furniture on it and I am IN LOVE!

(Yes that is a pet cot and canopy because basically our pups are real children.)


We have space for our furniture, space for our grill gazebo, and a little extra space for just moving around... basically:

Shopping List:

Home Depot:
-Transfer shovel
-Hand Tamper
-Weed Barrier with pegs
-Paver sand (9 bags)
-Paver bases (16 rectangles)
-Pavers (70)
-Edging (3 pieces with yard nails)
-Black and white outdoor rug
-Lanterns

Amazon:
-Patio furniture
-Dog cot

Lowe's:
-Grill Gazebo

Home South:
-Outdoor pillows

IKEA:
-Patio umbrella


The lesson I've learned is that I'm not made to be outdoors unless I'm sitting on my patio furniture, under the umbrella, with a lemonade in one hand.

My next project is redoing the foyer: storm door and light pennant coming soon.
Mr. R's next project is an ongoing one of making our yard actually grow grass. May the force be with you on that one.