My Patio Journey Begins
Like that familiar question “are we there yet?”, coming from the back seat of any car with children, I keep asking myself “am I finished yet?” The patio area at the side of my house is turning out to be one long journey. I have been working on it for weeks and it is slowly coming along. You can see some of my ideas I have in mind for this small outdoor space here.
Instead of me trying to fit everything in one long post, I thought it best to break it up with the hope that you will return and ride along with me for the rest of my journey. Before I start, a little background is in order.
When we first moved in the side of our house looked like this, minus the broken concrete of course. I took this picture when the concrete work was being done. At that time, there was no fence along the side and, as you can see, some “back in the day” dirty grey pavers.
The entire backyard was concrete and pavers as well.
Notice the 50′s checkerboard pattern. You can’t really tell, as these pictures were taken with a disposable camera way before I even knew what a blog was, but they are a mixture of green, red and yellow. After laying new concrete, we had all the pavers removed, replacing them with grass. The grass grew nicely for a while, but in the last couple of years, the side area started getting patchy and looked like this.
It is my guess that not enough of the sand was taken away when the pavers were removed when the grass was planted. Anyway, I used this to my advantage as your will see later. First, I cleared the grass. No. 2 son helped me with that and that only took a couple of days. When we finished, it looked like this.
Then, No. 2 son and I removed the excess dirt to make room for the pavers. I’m guessing but we must have removed at least 300 pounds of dirt to make room for the pavers. This has turned into another family affair, both my sons helping me along the way. Mr. DIY is out of town, again, on business. Somehow he times it just right to avoid hard labor as he did here.
No wheel barrow, no problem, we improvised and put all the excess dirt out of sight behind the garage for now.
Unfortunately, hand and elbow surgery postponed my progress. Ten days later, after getting the okay to resume normal activity, I continued my journey. I learned something really quickly; pavers are not so easy to install. Getting them even was very strenuous and time consuming. That coupled with a sore hand and elbow made everything even more difficult.
My original intention was to make this a no cost makeover using what I have, however, that idea went out the window when I realized I didn’t have enough pavers leftover from the backyard removal to fill the space. So I used the ones I had to create a border.
You might be thinking, those pavers are looking just a little tired. I agree. But don’t worry, I have plans to transform them. Just look at the difference a little power washing made.
So what’s next step of my patio journey? Transforming these old and outdated green pavers of course. Stay tuned, more to come.
Sorry to hear you’ve had surgery. Hope you heal quickly! The area looks much better. What are you going to do in the center?
Dropping by from Met Monday.
Allison
Atticmag
Wow! What a ton of work! Can’t wait to see what you do with those pavers.
Hope you are recovering well from your surgery… laying down pavers time consuming but the end result will be well worth it. I would love to see how you transform those pavers… I actually like the color after the power washing. Thanks for stopping by and for your sweet comment on my summer vignette.Enjoyed reading it.~Poppy
http://withadashofcolor.blogspot.com/
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