Budget Patio

As much as I love our home, it's not exactly great for entertaining.  I love to have people over but we really don't have the space inside for more than a few people, so we decided to expand our outdoor entertaining area.  Our backyard was pretty bare (with the exception of the bamboo plant from hell...if you know me, you have probably heard me talk about it) when we moved in, but there were some things that we could take advantage of...like the 100 pavers around the perimeter of the house.

(See those lovely red things?  And the bamboo plant...)

To the right of the existing patio was a complete disaster when we moved in.  It was essentially like walking in a swamp, you sunk in at least a few inches with each step.  We remedied this by installing a french drain (all by ourselves, I wish I had pictures for a post!) and planting some water loving aborvitaes. There is also a small deck over there which is in poor shape.  We're planning to put the outdoor dog kennel on it.  We knew that that area really wasn't very practical as it was currently being used, so expanding the patio was our best bet.  We had originally thought about building a deck or having a patio poured, but we quickly found out that was WAY out of our budget of less that $200. So I did some research and was really inspired by this paver patio by Amelia at House Pretty Blog:

(she has a great post about how she did her patio, check it out here)

So I ripped out about half of the pavers and stacked them on the existing patio.

 (This happened about 2 months prior to me actually working on the patio...Steve moved the rest of them while the patio was in progress, I was totally over moving them)

I set to work killing all the crabgrass and such by laying down cardboard over the area for a few weeks.  It totally did the job!  Anything that was left got sprayed with RoundUp and ripped out, until I was left with just a huge patch of dirt. Then I put down some weed preventer which Steve watered in for me.

Next, we laid down some landscape fabric.  I used landscape pins to hold the fabric down but didn't have enough so we just used a few rocks in places too.

(I had to run to the store to get more fabric because I totally forgot we used all of it when we made our raised bed...ugh...the light colored one is all I had left)

The next step was to start bringing in the sand.  We got 2 yards from our local landscaping supply for $60.  I used their calculator and found out that I needed 1.5 yards to cover the whole area at a 2 inch thickness, but one part of it had a big slope, so I wanted more to make everything level.  You really need to buy your sand from landscaping supply...it's four bucks for half a cubic foot at Home Depot and there's 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard...I'm sure you can imagine how much that adds up to.  We laid down some 2x4's along the fence so that the sand won't shift as much over time (thanks Dad for the tip) and brought in sand with a couple of wheelbarrows.  Leveling the sand was by far the most difficult part of this entire project.  I used a 2x4 and a level and basically drug the thing across the sand, adding and subtracting sand as necessary, until it was pretty much level.  Steve then went through with our fancy homemade hand tamper to compact the sand.  (It was $26 to buy one at Home Depot...and you know I'm not spending that if I don't have to.  )

Finally, it was time to start laying the pavers.  I just eyeballed where the center of the deck was and placed my first paver there, then used a 2x4 as a spacer to lay the rest of them.

(I came to realize that the fence line and the flower bed are not straight, but oh well that's a project for another day!)

I laid out the rest of the pavers and also a border at the end with the same scalloped edging you see above. We were finally ready to add the pea gravel.  We bought a yard, though it ended up begin a little more than we needed.  We laid a few pieces of particle board down to make it easier to bring in the gravel.  Steve brought it over with a wheelbarrow and I used a shop brush to spread it out.  I had to use a shovel to get it into some of the small spaces, but for the most part I just pushed it around with the broom. For a about $120 (see price breakdown below) we ended up with a beautiful new place for entertaining.  We still have to hang up the party lights and install the dog kennel on the deck.

100 pavers = $0 (we had to dig them out of the yard, but they're about $1 a piece a the hardware store)
2 yards of coarse sand = $60
1 yard of pea gravel = $30
1 roll of 3'x100' landscaping fabric = $15
Fabric pins = $5
Lanscape border = $10