Before & After: DIY patio

We had to scramble to finish it in time for Hannah's 1st birthday party, but our patio is D-O-N-E!

 

Adam's brother is visiting from North Carolina and we immediately put him to work (like, the morning after he arrived we surprised him with, 'let's go move some rock!'). After wetting, tamping and levelling the crusher dust one last time, we were ready to lay out the patio stones ('we' = Adam + his brother; I basically played the role of foreman from here on out). We used 18" x 18" concrete stones and spaced them ~3.25" apart (you can see Adam using a board as our spacer above). There was no real rhyme or reason to the spacing - this is just the look we liked and that made sense with the dimensions of our patio.

With our stones in place, everything was filled in with pea gravel and washed down with a good soaking from the hose.

The mini rock wall was an impromtu decision and a great way to repurpose some of the rock we dug up to build the patio (that's right, only some!). There are some nice pieces of slate in there and it's now one of my favourite parts of the patio.

The area behind the rock wall will eventually be filled in with bamboo. We've waged war on the bamboo growing in other areas of our yard, but this stuff makes a pretty good privacy screen so it's staying put. It was beaten back by our massive dirt pile, but we were able to rake the pile out and the bamboo should fill in nicely next year.



 

We've since added some colour with potted annuals and we've been enoying the space with some temporary furniture. Next year we'd like to add a table with benches (a possible DIY project?), and we're also talking about adding a privacy fence behind the row of cedars. Lots of decorating fun ahead, that's for sure, but for now we just love having a spot to relax outside.

And it's SO much better than what we started with, don't you think?