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How To Build A Paver Patio

Hallelujah, the patio is done!

how-to-add-a-paver-patio

I’ve caught my breath a little bit and regained feeling in most of my muscles, so I’m back to tell you the end of the tale. Let’s see, where did we leave off? Oh yeah, with us me passed out on the mostly-laid pavers late Friday night.

Dirt Night With Us

As you know from Sherry’s post yesterday, we took Saturday off to have some family time / start Mother’s Day early. Then on Sunday afternoon, I decided to take an hour or two to finish cutting the pavers around the edge. Apparently my day away from patio made me forget how much effort each step of this process takes. My “hour or two” turned into “seven or eight.”

Allow me to demonstrate my process to explain why. Naturally, curved edges require lots of cuts. This I knew going in. But residual confidence from tiling our old bathroom had me ready to take on this more-than-beginner design.

Patio No Edges

So to determine where to place each cut, I laid my full stone in place against the border pavers (which I’ve learned is called “a soldier course”) and marked where my cut should go (the area that overlapped the border) with a pencil.

Patio Cut Stone Marked

To cut, I entrusted my brother-from-an-inanimate-object-mother: the wet saw. You may remember I fell in love with this guy during the bathroom project in our first house. But after all of the recent patio craziness, we aren’t so chummy anymore (we’re not “tight” or “aight” as the kids say).

Patio Cut Stone Wet Saw

It’s really not the poor saw’s fault. He just wasn’t meant for this type of job. But since he was free (aka, on loan from my dad, who paid $99 for it btw) I wanted to give him a shot, instead of dropping $700 on his big brother. The issue is that my blade wouldn’t cut through all 2.5-ish inches of paver (those suckers were thick). So I had to do 2 cuts per paver – one, then another one from the other side once the paver was flipped over. Some particularly long cuts even required 4 trips down ol’ Wet Saw Lane because part of the machine blocked the whole stone from sliding through all of the way. And even after two to four cuts per paver, I still had to break the stones apart with a quick chisel-like move (thanks to a hammer and screwdriver) to smash the piece in the middle that my blade clearly still couldn’t reach:

Patio Cut Stone Chisel

So multiply two to four cuts per paver by the 50+ stones that needed cutting and you’ll start to understand why it took me so long. That $700 big daddy wet saw was starting to look well worth the money by about hour three. But I’m cheap. So I stuck with the borrowed (free) one.

Assuming my cut was accurate (which it wasn’t always, unfortunately) all I had to do was lay the cut stone in place and tap it down gently with a rubber mallet (which we used when setting all of the pavers in the middle and along the border of the patio as well, just so they sunk slightly into the bed of sand and were level/secure).

Patio Cut Stone Mallet

Despite all of the hassle, when it works – it’s a beautiful thing (plus I later learned that the sand that I’d brush between the stones would camouflage some of the less perfect cuts really well).

Patio Cut Stone In Place

By the end of Sunday I had finished all of my cuts and even had enough energy to remove and re-attach one of our sagging gates (it threatened to scrape the stone a bit when closed).

Patio John Removing Gate

So here’s the patio in all of it’s pre-sand glory (the whiter edge pavers are just lighter from wet saw dust that hadn’t been hosed off yet).

Patio Pre Sand After 1

And here I amid all of my post-paver cutting sexiness. Happy Mother’s Day to Sherry, right? That’s spray from the wet saw all over my shirt and face (thank goodness for goggles, wish I had bought a mask). And notice the yellow hands? That’s some sort of strange stain from my work gloves (apparently they don’t like getting wet).

Patio John Dirty

Oh, and since I promised more info about the pattern – here it is a bit closer:

Patio Pattern Close Up

We’ve heard it called both an “I Pattern” and a “K Pattern” (so feel free to split the alphabetical difference and go with “J Pattern”). Although sometimes I see it as more of an “H” – made up of two 6 x 9″ pavers and four 6 x 6″s – and flanked by more 6 x 9″s on all sides. There’s a diagram here that might make seeing the whole H thing more clear than our pic above.

The reason we opted for this pattern in the first place is because it’s what the previous owners chose for the pavers in our driveway (and we wanted a cohesive look). Plus we like that it looks sort of like organized chaos. It appears random but there’s really a method behind it all. We’re nerds for that stuff. The lady at the stone yard warned us that it can be more difficult than some of the truly random patio patterns, but we honestly found it pretty straightforward once we got our first few pavers down. We just constructed one or two of those H-looking shapes and built out from there.

Patio Pre Sand After 2

When Monday rolled around, I prepared for the final step by breaking out a broom and some leftover bags of paver sand (when I ran short on Friday and grabbed sand at Lowe’s, I must’ve overcompensated a bit so I still had a lot left). The purpose of this top application of sand is to fill the cracks between the pavers so they don’t shift. The process was pretty straightforward. Step one: dump sand on pavers.

Patio Sand Pile

Step two: Push it around with your broom ’til all of the cracks have sand in them (this was just from one bag so far):

Patio Sand Progress

Step three: lightly mist the surface with water so that the sand slides down into the cracks.

Patio Wetting Sand

Though it really is more like a twenty step process, because like shampoo-ing, it’s one of those “rinse and repeat” situations (or at least it was for me). See, my wet crack sand (wait, that sounds gross) did a lot of sliding between the pavers – making things not so pretty on top.

Patio Wet Sand Cracks

So I repeated. And repeated again. And then did some touch ups. This step seemed to take longer than I expected (consider it to be the theme of this whole project) but by Monday afternoon it all seemed pretty settled into place for a consistent and even look. And happily the yellow-orange tint to the sand disappeared when it dried out (it was really wet and clumpy when we applied it but it thinned and dried to a nice complementary gray tone).

Patio No Dirt Around Edges

Oh and here’s a note for all you fancy patio DIYers. If you have it in the budget you can splurge for Polymeric Sand (which basically gets brushed on and then misted with water, which turns it into a concrete-like consistency so it sets up hard to discourage weeds and all that good stuff). But thanks to our bursting patio budget, we opted to use standard paver sand which was about $100 cheaper (it was used on the patio at our last house which we enjoyed for 3+ years without much more than very occasional weeding so we knew it would work for now). And we can always upgrade to the good sand later (if we have $100 to spare down the road, it’s as simple as spraying the sand out of the cracks with the highest hose setting and switching to the fancy Polymeric stuff).

Anyway, with my sand step done, I jubilantly (yes, I was beyond excited to be almost done) moved on to my last task before handing things over to Sherry, which was backfilling the edges of the patio with dirt (since exposed plastic edging is akin to VPL). I forgot to take an “after” of my borders all filled in with dirt, so let’s fast forward to the real after afters. But first, let’s enjoy a look back at two liriope-filled before shots:

Outside Burger Potty

Patio Dig First

And now the patio-tastic after fest- complete with totally temporary furniture:

Patio After 2 Corrected

Since we sold all of our old patio furniture before we moved (which wouldn’t have worked well in this layout anyway) this is all random stuff that we had in the sunroom/basement/cluttered playroom. Actually a lot of it isn’t rain-proof at all, so Sherry just dragged it out there for fun (yes, after pics with temporary furniture is her idea of a good time because she thinks an empty patio reveal would have been “a real womp-womp”). I definitely agree that it helps with scale and stuff (and who am I to deny my wife of an hour of playing with already-owned pillows and random furniture?). I think we both just liked the idea of beginning to picture various ways that we can enjoy our new 300 square feet of added outdoor living space. And of course it’ll look a lot better with not temporary furniture when we can invest in some down the line.

Our long-term dream is to have some sort of daybed/loveseat with a coffee table to create a casual “outdoor living room” along with a spot for a sandbox slash baby pool for Clara. Because we have plans for a big outdoor dining zone somewhere else (but with an “outdoor living room” situation on the patio, we could still enjoy casual meals there).

Patio After 3

Of course Sherry went nuts with the whole fantasy world and played scrabble with herself to conjure up this cozy scene (and even got two water glasses to suggest that she wasn’t out on the patio alone playing against herself). Busted.

Patio After7

But speaking of playing, we do seriously hope this is a space that Clara gets a lot of use out of. Since we no longer have that huge driveway behind our old house, we’ve wanted a spot where she can be outside, minus the fears of her running into the road. So this gated-on-all-sides area is perfect for whenever she doesn’t feel like playing in the grassy backyard beyond. Because chalk just isn’t as much fun in the grass.

Patio After4

Although Clara may be a few developmental milestones away from actually enjoying a game of hopscotch, at least it’s not too soon to tap sticks of chalk together.

Patio After 5

And she only tried to eat it twice. That my friends, is progress.

The only item in our 100% temporary patio layout that will be permanent is the grill. It’s been hiding in my basement workroom since we moved because I had no other spot for it (it lived in the carport for a while but that was just weird). So from the moment we first started talking about Project Patio I had an area all planned out for this baby. And although I’m talking like I’m some big macho grillmaster, I’ve probably used the darn thing less than a dozen times. Hopefully its beautiful new home will inspire us to get better acquainted. Especially when we get some permanent outdoor furniture to go with it.

Patio After8

As for Sherry, she’s more excited about the “crowning jewel” of the patio as she likes to call it: a ceramic bird feeder that she snagged at Marshall’s for $9.99 a few weeks back. It’s been sitting on the counter next to our bathroom sink (away from roaming Clara hands) just waiting for a new patio to preside over. And it looks a heckova lot better out here than it did near the sink.

Patio After 6

So there you have it, the end to our patio-building party. And it’s just in time to start setting up for the real party (Clara’s birthday on Saturday). Perhaps we’ll challenge our guests to some hopscotch?

Patio After 8

We wouldn’t mind a few crossed fingers for good weather this Saturday. It rained on Clara’s birthday last year so we unscientifically decided that it couldn’t rain again this year (although the odds are probably the same every year). And as soon as we finished the patio I turned to Sherry and said “You know what this means right? We finished the patio in time so it’s going to rain on Saturday. We jinxed ourselves.” Here’s hoping I’m wrong.

Oh and here’s a rarely seen angle taken from the new lower patio looking up at the upper patio (which was always there) and the sliders in the living room and sunroom that lead out to it. That area was too small to accommodate our grill (let alone any larger seating arrangements) so we’re so glad that we expanded our outdoor living space with the addition of the paver patio below.

Patio After 9

We estimate that we spent about 30 hours on the whole patio project, from planning to clean-up (but we did mess around with lots of curves and hit some crazy concrete during the demo phase, so it won’t necessarily take everyone that long). And now for the big ol’ budget breakdown:

  • 300 square feet of Cottage Stone pavers (from Southside Building Supply): $621
  • Heavy duty plastic patio edging and spikes (from Southside Building Supply): $69.00
  • Paver sand (from Southside Building Supply & Lowe’s): $107
  • Gravel (from Southside Building Supply): $240
  • Delivery for pavers, sand, and gravel (from Southside Building Supply): $145
  • Miscellaneous supplies (wood stakes, line levels, nylon string, and hand tamper from Home Depot): $40
  • Weed blocking fabric & crampons (from Home Depot): $30
  • Grand (ouch) total: $1,252*

*We actually paid $1,332 but got an $80 deposit back when we returned the bags that our gravel and sand came in.

We already chatted about how our original under 1K budget was blown here (well, in the waaay beginning Sherry proclaimed that this would be a two-day-under-$500 project, how wrong she was). But in the end we’re happy to have spent what we did and to have worked our buns off to save nearly 4K instead of hiring a pro (estimates for a patio with curves of this size started around $5,000). Totally worth the blood, sweat, tears, and creepy orange glove-stained hands. But if you’re asking me if I’d do it again tomorrow, the answer is: chiiiill. Let me relax for a hot second.

Psst- Want to look back on the entire patio process from beginning to end? Here’s the first post (about planning), the second post (about prepping the area), the third post (about unexpected budget breakage), the fourth post (about further prepping the area), and the fifth post (about adding the gravel & sand along with the majority of the pavers).

Comments

  1. Molly says

    AWESOME job, Youngsters. My hubs and I are saving up for a deck–hopefully we’ll get there in the next year or two. It’s a second story deck, which makes us a little nervous to DIY, but we’ll see…

    As for lights, we have these:
    http://www.potterybarn.com/products/globe-string-lights/?catalogId=73&bnrid=3380801&cm_ven=Google%20Base&cm_cat=Shopping&cm_pla=Feed&cm_ite=Google%20Base-6638456

    Like so:
    http://thenestinggame.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/some-summer/
    (4th pic, second row)

    They seemed pricey to me, but they’ve held up and look so magical.

    Again, great job! Very impressed.

    Reply

  3. Jennifer says

    All I can say is gorgeous!!!!!!!
    When can you come to mine! lol! Really John, that looks professionally done.

    Congratulations and Happy Birthday to Clara!!!

    Reply

  4. Mary Thomas says

    It looks amazing, guys. I can’t wait to see the permanent furniture set up. Oh and I love the detail that went into staging it for the afters. Hahhaaa..

    Reply

  5. KathyG says

    Fantastic!

    I have a question, was this patio something you envisioned right away, like maybe even before you decided to buy the house, or did it come to you as you lived in it?

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      We didn’t have a clue that we could add that to the side yard before we closed because we kept envisioning that spot as really thin (it’s a lot bigger than it appears thanks to all the greenery) so over time after living here a while we first came up with the idea of widening the brick path that was there (it was so narrow and all the monkey grass made it feel claustrophobic) and then over time we thought “hey… what about a patio? I bet we can keep the trees and just lose those ten rows of monkey grass that don’t serve any purpose anyway.” So glad we got to keep every tree!

      xo,
      s

  7. Kaitlin says

    So impressed by you two– it looks incredible, and it must be so satisfying to walk out there and know you did all that yourselves. If I were you guys I’d be popping out of the house every half hour and doing a self-congratulatory happy dance on the patio. :) Btw, does Burger love it as much as Clara?

    Reply

  9. Mollie says

    That patio gets a 10 out of 10 in amazing, (and that photo of John gets a 10 out of 10 in hilarious! I laughed out loud at work…oops) Great job, so jealous!

    Reply

  10. Laura says

    we have been drooling over the possibility of a new patio in our back yard and this makes me feel like maybe we could actually do it ourselves! it looks great! congrats on a job well done!!

    Reply

  11. Laurie says

    I’m soooooo jealous and inspired! You did an excellent job. I love the curves and the pattern. Thanks for the pricing info. It looks way more expensive than what you spent. Keeping my fingers crossed for you that it doesn’t rain. You deserve a little sunshine, but if it does rain, just remember Clara is the sunshine.

    Reply

  12. Kay says

    This looks amazing!! I love how it really fits into the space and looks like it belongs there. You did a really nice job.
    If you sweep off the patio (tree debris) do you have to worry about sweeping out the sand? I hope that it stays in, since you worked so hard to get it there!!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Yeah after you mist the sand with water it sinks down a bit and feels pretty secure. I swept the pavers to get rid of some leaves before taking the after pics and all of the sand thankfully stayed put.

      xo,
      s

  15. Megan Brewer says

    Well done! I LOVE the combination of the curved lines on the perimeter of the patio and the right angles (I am a former math teacher after all) of the bricks! Beautiful beautiful beautiful!!!!! Here’s to a wonderful summer spent in your backyard on your patio with friends and family!
    Happy decorating and living-
    Megan
    http://cottagebluedesigns.blogspot.com/

    Reply

  18. Ro says

    I love how you totally gave up Sherry on her faux-to shoot!

    The patio came out totally amazing. I can’t wait to see how you dress it up for Clara’s shindig!

    Reply

  20. RC says

    Looks great! Congratulations on a heavy duty job well done. The temporary furniture definitely helps give the photos a sense of scale.

    Reply

  23. Laura@JourneyChic says

    It looks wonderful! It also made me realize that fools must have laid our patio – there’s no way they used all the steps you did since there are loads of weeds and pavers popping up. I’m always impressed by the amount of patience you guys have for taking your time so that you can do things correctly. Always worth it in the long run!

    Reply

  24. Brenna says

    Congrats on a job very well done! It was so fun (and helpful) to follow along. It looks absolutely amazing; you should be so proud. What a wonderful place to celebrate Clara’s first birthday.

    Reply

  25. Suzanne says

    Is it crazy that even though I read every word of every patio post I’m still excited to start our “quick and easy” patio project? It’s like those final finished after photos totally erased all my memory of reading “way over budget” and “eight hour days just cutting edges” and “literally tons of stone”.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Haha, I’m the same way. Somehow in my head the after makes it all worth it. Especially when John did most of the work anyway. Hahahahaahaha. Just kidding hubby. Love you.

      xo,
      s

  28. shunta says

    1. WOW, I really like this finished product!! 2. Jealous. In the nice, I’m still am happy for you kind of way!! :-D and 3. Praying for no rain on Saturday!! Can’t wait to see party pics!!! You guys never cease to amaze me, it looks SOOOO good!!

    Reply

  29. Ashley G says

    The patio is amazing, as is John! What he created is so beautiful and admirable, especially since he seems to have kept such good humor throughout! Does Clara have an outdoor swing yet; I bet she would love it!

    Reply

  30. Tijana says

    The title of this post reminds me of a joke.

    What do you call an Irish furniture salesman?
    …
    Paddy O’Furniture!

    Reply

  31. Tash says

    Beautiful. If this website ever stops being successful (yeah RIGHT) you have a career already waiting for you. You da’ man.

    Reply

  32. Jessica Z. says

    Hip hip hooray, the patio’s done! And it looks fantastic. I bet you will be spending tons of time out there now. And it looks pretty shady, which will be great when that Virginia Piedmont sun starts to bake down in a few weeks. And I have to say that after looking at the before and after shots this is one of the more dramatic transformations I have seen you guys accomplish at this house – well worth the hard work!

    Reply

  33. julie g. says

    Love it – there is not a professional out there that could have done a better job. This is the first time I realized what was beyond the car port too.

    We lovingly refer to our carport as the “side porch” but I will say it comes in great for parties and creating a nice shaded outdoor room. With your gate between the two spaces you’ll have nice flow for entertaining if you want to.

    Happy Birthday Clara!!!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Yeah we’re thinking we’ll use the carport too for the party (assuming it doesn’t rain and people can hang out in the sunroom, upper patio, lower patio and the carport too). Fingers crossed…

      xo,
      s

  36. Georgia Rowe says

    Love it, it looks like a very inviting place to relax!
    Bet burger and Clara love it! more play space for them and extra chill out space for you! win win all round!

    I had this crazy idea… the decking that goes into your living room would look so funky painted, for eg. Turqoise or white, green or Blue… your bird feeder gave me the idea!

    x

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      It looks like concrete that they covered with pea gravel when it was still wet (so they’re all stuck into it). Not the best, but not the worst either.

      xo,
      s

  39. Jennifer says

    As cheesy as it sounds…

    John, you da man!

    Great work. It looks fabulous! (Sherry you can say that in an Oprah sing-songy voice if you want. I certainly am.)

    Reply

  42. Mike @HA says

    Your patio looks AHHH-MAZING! Seriously, I’m way impressed. I’m planning on building a patio next year and I was going to only use right angles because I’m afraid to make all the cuts for curves but you give me hope! And it looks so much more professional with the curves!

    Reply

  43. COLLEEN says

    amazing!!! I loe how you took such unusable space and made it so practical and beautiful!!! Great Job John you are becoming quite the home improvement guru. Even if it rains you now have the whole summer to enjoy and another place to decorate!!!

    Reply

  44. Thais Bessa says

    Wow, impressive! Congratulations, it looks amazing. After too much living-in-tiny-flats-in-London, we just bought our first house and every night I rub some YHL action on my husband’s face and tell him he better get “John style DIY” asap, lol.

    Well done again!

    PS: Our 15 months old still puts everything in her mouth, she loves eating crayons/chalk sticks.

    Reply

  45. Jess says

    The patio looks fantastic! Congrats on finishing in plenty of time for Clara’s birthday party. My fingers are crossed for no rain on Saturday!

    Reply

  46. Sara says

    It looks fantastic! Great job! I can’t wait to see it with some strings of lights and maybe a hanging lantern or two!
    Have you thought about finding an old metal glider and some chairs to put out there? You could get it painted in a retro color scheme!

    Reply

  47. jess says

    Congrats! Such a project to complete and it’s beautiful! Very creative and not just your ol’ slab of concrete patio.

    Reply

  49. Kristin says

    Amazing!
    Sorry if this question has been asked before, but do you plan to pave the small “upper” patio with matching stones later? I think it would look great.
    I like this small enclosed patio a lot, especially because you do have other, more open outdoor spaces as well so you can choose. I can envision the kid/s playing on the new patio and you two relaxing in some comfy chairs on the upper patio (or, as we all know you, you would be probably answering blog posts on your laptops, hehe).

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      We thought about that but it would raise the top step 2.5″ which would make it look crazy. I’ve been pondering the idea of staining the orangey-pea gravel up there a cool gray tone to tie into the lower patio though. But in person it’s not that mismatched actually (thanks to the fence which is almost the exact same tone as the upper patio – so it all kind of blends.

      xo,
      s

    • RC says

      You could always throw down one of those outdoor rugs to cover up most of the upper patio if it doesn’t look so good compared to the spanking new patio.

  50. Marci says

    Wow, looks amazing!!!!! This is one of my favorite projects and I can’t wait to see how you end up furnishing it. We have a flagstone patio(at least thats what I think its called) and although I love it, we have weeds coming up. Do you think we could dig the weeds out and then use the method you used with the sand to keep the weeds out? The patio came with the house so I have no clue whether there was a weed blocker put under it before the stone was laid… I imagine not!

    Reply

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