Home | Resources | 1836 House | 1895 House | 1924 House | Projects | Antiques | Outdoors

Projects | Adding a "simple" patio to the backyard

Getting started
About four years ago Anna had a deck added on to the back of our downstairs den.  It was a good idea because it really expanded the useable space of the den to be able to walk directly out to a same level 

Do you have any idea how much 63 patio stones and 83 bags of gravel weigh? Multiply each by about 50 pounds.

deck.  As the carpenter crew was packing their truck Anna leaned against the still unpainted rail and stated, "You know, what we really need is a patio to make this space work."  The deal was closed when she showed where I could put my little gas grill on the future patio.

So, four years and ten minutes after the deck was complete, we installed a patio.  We decided to use the 18 x 18 inch square stones with a brick design.

One of the first and amazingly hard steps was to remove the right amount of dirt.  According to the instructions, you should have anywhere from 1 1/2 to 4 inches of gravel base.  The depth depends on the intended use of the patio. With light use, I decided to go with just a 1 1/2" base.

What I did not realize was that we were actually going to dive in to not one, but three separate projects.   1. Install the patio  2. Do something with all that dirt we removed  3. Repair the grass destroyed by the traffic and sheer weight of gravel and stones.  

Little did I realize that something had to be done with all the dirt removed for the gravel and stones.  Fortunately, we had a long bed that could take all the dirt.

  Back to Projects |  Next step