The Urban Gazette features guest authors on a monthly basis with topics covering health, family life, DIY projects, and travel. We are very happy to have Ashley writing for June about her and her husband's outdoor DIY. Ashley and Bryan live in beautiful Colorado and enjoy all that the state has to offer in outdoor living. Thank you Ashley for sharing such a creative solution. We LOVE it!
In August of 2013, we began our house hunt. Due to the increase in rent prices, apartment living was no longer a viable option for us. After several months of searching, we found a townhome with a little yard. There was a patio and even though it looked small, we thought we could make it work. Since we bought in the winter, we were excited for the summer when we could sit out in our back yard!
Last spring we completely redid the back yard. We replaced the dead grass and put down new stone. It looked great! By the summer, we realized that the patio was too small for us to sit out there and enjoy our new yard. We couldn't grill food comfortably, we had to be careful not to hit our heads on the kitchen window overhang, and our knees were bumping the table.
We thought about purchasing new patio furniture, but we really liked ours. Since we also wanted to put a smoker out back for my husband's game meat, we decided that it was time for us to somehow expand our patio. We started putting some money aside even though we weren’t sure what our plan was.
We talked to my dad (who has been in construction for longer than he'd like me to admit) about options. We didn't want to pour concrete since that is a permanent solution and we didn't want any future homeowners to be deprived of the option to landscape. Another option was to build a wood patio, but we thought that would be too much of a hassle since we would have to get HOA approval plus permits. My dad said he'd help us build it, but that process did not sound fun. At this point, we didn't know what to do, so we put the idea on the back burner.
One night, we were at my father-in-law's house and we saw what he had done around the fire pit in his backyard. He had cleared the grass and plants and made a small square "patio" out of large paver stones. We asked him how he made that, and his instructions sounded easy. We loved the idea and thought we could modify it for our back yard. It would be easy to install, the cheapest out of the options we considered, and it would be easy to pull up should any future homeowners want to. We sought HOA approval, received it, and we were ready to begin.
The first step was for us to clear and level the new patio area. Bryan pulled up the grass and then he used a shovel and a hoe to flatten the ground and create a slight slope away from the house to allow for water runoff. We allowed the ground to sit for a couple days so that it would settle and create a hard, compact base for our new patio.
After that, we went to Lowe's and found our supplies. Links and descriptions of the items we used are listed below. Our first items were paver restraints and spikes to create a clean boundary between our new patio and the rest of our yard/fence. After that, we bought enough sand to create a 2" base. If you look on the back of the sand, it will tell you how many cubic inches/feet are in a bag. The amount of sand you lay will depend on how thick your paver stones are and how much leveling you need to accomplish with the sand. We needed approximately four bags.
Next, we looked at paver stones. We decided to go with a slightly more expensive paver stone since we had a small area and wouldn't need much. To create an interesting pattern, we decided to mix 12x12 and 12x18 inch paver stones. The last item we bought was polymeric sand to seal the pavers and set them.
Once we got home with our supplies, we laid the paver restraints around the cleared area and fastened them to the ground with the spikes. Next, we laid the stone in sections. Bryan poured the paver sand in about a quarter of our area and I handed him the stones to lay. He put them down one-by-one, wiggling them down into the sand to ensure they were level with each other. We were lucky in that we didn't have to cut any stones to make the pattern work, but if you do, you can ask a sales associate at your local home improvement store to show you a circular saw blade that will cut pavers. If you don't have a circular saw, you can probably rent one there as well.
Once we had all the stones laid, we poured the polymeric sand over the entire surface, swept it into all the joints, checked that the entire area was level, swept off the remaining polymeric sand, and then used our hose to soak the polymeric sand. The polymeric sand has a binding agent that activates when wet. As the sand dries, it hardens and locks the pavers together. After you soak the polymeric sand, you have to let it sit for a specific time period. Ours was for 24 hours. We waited until the next day, moved our patio furniture onto our new patio area, hung up little lantern lights on our fence, and enjoyed our new space.
In all, this project only took a morning of prep and a morning of laying everything. It was fairly quick and easy. The hardest part was just carrying the rock from the car to our yard. The best part was that, all-in-all, it only cost about $350 (with tax)!
Items Used:
