The Patio Project

This weekend I embarked on the small task (or at least that's what I thought at the time) of making our patio a bit bigger. With our budget being what it is, we've been waiting to get a good deal on patio stones. Well that chance came along when my grandfather B was remodeling his front walk up. He had about 16 2x2 patio stones that he no longer needed. In fact he wanted to get rid of them ASAP. Free fit right into our budget so thank you very much grandma and grandpa B.

I started on Saturday around 9am. Since my hubby hurt his knee a little while ago, it was pretty much me and my grandpa L doing the work. I started with 6 patio stones at the bottom of our deck stairs. It was functional enough, but not very pretty.



I started by taking up the stones that were already there, and measured from the 3 existing stones to the fence to make sure that we had enough room for the 2x2 stones since we didn't have a stone cutter. I had to move two of the stones back to make sure the rest would fit. That was quite the task itself. Then we had to dig up the sod and some dirt in the area that the patio was going. My grandpa B had some left over sand from putting his steps down so we went over there to pick up some of that. Can you say heavy! Although the correct way to do the patio would be to dig down about a foot of dirt and replace it with the sand and crushed rock... since it was so heavy, we cheated a bit and only put down about an inch. Shhhh don't tell.

We got the area as level as possible then K came in and helped with the pounding down of the sand and crushed stone. We used a 4 foot level taking measurements on the horizontal, vertical and diagonal to make sure that the stones would sit level and to make sure that we were grading away from the house. (which essentially means the patio slopes slightly away from the house so no water should sit against the foundation) Not every stone went down without a hitch. Yes there was some cussing, especially when my fingers got squished under a stone. But we managed to make a pretty decent patio if I do say so myself. I also have some extra dirt for my garden extension. (that's next week's project) We finished up around 5pm, and let me tell you I can feel every shovel full! I could barely pick up Demi today.

Without further ado, here is our new absolutely free patio. Another big thank you to nanna and grandpa L for their help. A thank you to grandma and grandpa B for the supplies and to my hubby for helping me to keep the cussing to a minimum.




























Really me,
The paver
Nik