At our last house, my husband was able to build our deck, but at this house we wanted a screened in porch and figured that was best left to the professionals. To help with costs, the patio became our DIY project. Most people think we are nuts for doing this project immediately after moving into our house, but let's not forget that my house is full of screaming, energetic boys and they NEED. TO. BE. OUTSIDE. And I don't want to be sitting in dirt and grass while supervising them;) The last straw for me was really when my outdoor couch and chairs were sitting out front, a-la white trash chic, and a giant wind gust tumbled them across the street to the neighbor's house and busted them up along the way.
I love the look of a flagstone patio, but it was very far out of the budget and not quite as DIY-friendly. After a bit of shopping around, we decided on purchasing from Home Depot. I had a 20% off coupon from my USPS moving packet, so I used that during the purchase in order to save the max amount allowable, which was $200. The other benefit to using Home Depot, is that they do the purchasing per-stone. Once we were finished, I was able to return about $100 worth of unused pavers with no problems whatsoever. Designing was a bit of trial and error. We designed on paper during our many snowy days and thought we had come up with the perfect design. Once the snow melted we went out and marked off the space, then moved our patio furniture into it and realized we were way off. Some more Tetris-like antics and we finally figured out how we thought the layout would work best.
First step in the building process? Pack up the boys and get out of town:) We've learned from past experience that DIY projects are one giant headache, which is multiple exponentially based on the number of little kids you have running underfoot as you work on it. So hubby stayed home to dig away while I took the boys on a little Spring Break adventure with Grandma.
As with most DIY projects, things never work out as planned. But, he was able to complete a good deal of work while we we gone. Removing sod was a piece of cake because it was very new and not rooted to the ground. Digging out was a whole other ball game since we essentially live on a giant piece of stone with a bit of dirt mixed into it.
Next up was adding the paver stone, leveling, then the sand. At that point, we returned from our trip and I was able to help out with laying the pavers. My husband did the cutting and I put together the world's most eye-crossing puzzle. We worked about 12 hours or so that first day laying stone and then another 8 hours or so the next day. Lastly, sand was brushed into to the cracks to fill it in. For a more accurate description of how to complete this project, just Google it. As I said, this was more my husband's project than mine.
One part that I took on as my own was the landscaping. I really love how it finished the whole project off. Now I just need to figure out how to keep it alive! Hopefully sometime in the next year or so we will be able to put in our planned L-shaped bar and built-in grill. We created a concrete base already to prepare for it and plan to buy one of those DIY outdoor kitchen sets online. A few years down the road, our plan is to put in an outdoor fireplace along the big curve. We will very likely hire someone to do this project and save ourselves some giant headaches.
Things we learned along the way: 1) Projects always take longer than you plan (duh), 2) Install underground gutter extensions - we put this on one of the gutters, but for some reason neglected the other one. The very first day it rained, we had a bunch of floating pavers. We've done a quick fix for now, but I think one day we will need to find the motivation to go back and do that part properly. 3) Plan for the long-term. We thought we were doing this and had the piping installed to be able to put in a built in grill later on. What we didn't think about was the fact that it would be so dark out there at night. I wish we had thought to put in outdoor lighting. This is something we will have to go back and take care of at some point in the future.
Last step? Margaritas, and a heck of a lot of them!
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