Backyard Update, Part 2: Pavers
Alright, kids. I’m back with the 2nd installment of Extreme Home Makeover: Backyard Edition and what a doozy this project was.
Of all the projects we did in the backyard, this one saved us the most money and made the biggest impact.
It also made me think I might give up on ever doing another DIY project.
But don’t worry, after about 3 months of saying, “I will NEVER do that again,” I’ve come back around. I always come back around *EYE ROLL*.
I feel like this is a terrible lead in, but you know I like to keep it real over here, and…
…I’M JUST SAYING THIS WAS LEGIT THE HARDEST THING I’VE EVER DONE IN THE NAME OF DIY.
But I didn’t expect it. Which was maybe what made it worse.
Like, this project almost broke me.
Months later, I’m impressed I can even type. Anyways, enough yammering on!
This tale begins on a mild May afternoon. Roughly 2 months after a tornado ripped through our city and one week after a derecho (seriously, Nashville could not catch a break for a bit), I thought to myself, “might as well get the backyard prepped to spend more time outside!”
Previously, there wasn’t much to our backyard, so that effort wasn’t typically too involved (click here if you missed the first post). We have an aggregate patio, and the previous owners extended the footprint by putting in pavers. Great, right?
Mehhhhh....
The pavers were dated, dirty, and positioned to make the patio as a whole a strange shape. And worst of all, they were home to many an ant bed as well as a truly impressive/infuriating display of weeds.
You already know I’m not good at compromising on my vision.
I wanted this:
This pic is my dream backyard scenario, JSYK.
But I had this:
I know, I KNOW. I am mortified to even post this photo. But we’re first time homeowners and this was a problem we inherited from someone else. Also, please look at the beautiful deck at our neighbors’ house. I don’t blame them for putting up a privacy wall. I wouldn’t want to look at this trash heap, either.
So for 4 years, I assumed the pavers were just a necessary evil I’d have to deal with until one Friday evening my husband saw me attempting to pull them up to grab the weeds from between them and unexpectedly offered his assistance.
“I’ll help you pull those up if you want.”
“Wait…really?” I asked in disbelief. My husband is not a DIYer. He would rather pay a professional and move on. And I like to suffer and do things on my own and make it take forever.
“Yeah, we could probably knock it out in a weekend.”
A weekend project. A totally normal concept, but not one with which I am personally familiar.
I paused for a bit. There was absolutely no way this was going to turn out how I wanted, but he doesn’t readily volunteer his efforts, so I figured I’d better take advantage.
“Okay, let’s do it!”
I was so excited to have his help. And the weather was actually really nice, which is basically the only way you can get me to do anything outside this time of year.
We started removing the pavers Saturday morning. We pulled up all of the weeds (3 bags full!), and they were so heavy I was worried our waste company would think there was a dead body in the trashcan.
PROGRESS SHOT
Some of the pavers are shaped like rectangles and others are square. We stacked similar kinds in piles around the patio so as not to kill the grass and called it a day.
On Sunday morning, I was feeling a little rough. I’m one of those people that never does weights at the gym. Well, now, I don’t do anything at the gym because I had to cancel my membership #thankscovid BUT PREVIOUSLY I hung out on the stairclimber or elliptical and never glanced in the direction of the weights. So you might imagine how I’d feel after carrying 20 and 40lb pavers around my backyard all morning like I was at some sort of reject Crossfit facility.
Toting my dogs around didn’t prepare me for this.
Nevertheless, she persisted!
We used Room for Tuesday’s patio paver tutorial. Because we already had pavers down, the only thing we really needed to do was make sure the sand directly underneath the pavers was flat. Could we have done a better job of this? Yes. But with limited patience and attention spans, we did our best. But we might have hurried through this step and onto the next. ANYWAYS.
The next part involved a little math. I measured the space and then the pavers to see how many repeats could fit in one row. Next, I started flipping the pavers around until I came up with a pattern I liked. Then, I figured out how to orient them in the patio. We actually ended up flipping the pavers over to the underside. The top has a wavy texture, but the underside is flat. And the rectangular pavers have a divider on the top that’s a magnet for dirt and debris, but that doesn’t exist on the other side!
So we started at one corner of the patio, worked our way to the end of the row where it met the aggregate, and then moved on to the next row. As we filled in the pavers, I adjusted the sand underneath to make sure it was flat every time, which involved picking up and putting down the pavers multiple times, and THAT was the real killer. It might not have been so bad with bricks or smaller pavers, but the weight we were working with was what was really wearing. We finished the main part of the patio on Sunday, and on Monday Justin was back to work so I was on my own to finish the border around the patio. I moved slow, but I eventually knocked it out!
The dogs instantly loved it. The aggregate is actually pretty rough to walk on, and I think this feels much better on their little puppy feet!
Here’s a shot from the other side:
The final piece of the puzzle was filling in between the pavers with PermaSand, and the reasoning for this is two-fold:
1. It helps hold the pavers in place.
2. It keeps weeds from growing between the pavers!!!!!! (if you think this is optional, pls look at the before pic)
Since the sand needed to be able to set for at least 24 hours with no rain and it rained everyday for a week, we didn’t complete this part until probably 3 weeks later. And then when we tried, we ran out of sand. I thought I bought extra, but that sand goes pretty quickly! I think it ultimately took 3 40lb tubs of sand.
This is stated in the tutorial we followed, but the PermaSand can stain the patio pavers. Although we did our best to remove any loose sand from the patio before spraying it down, our pavers were stained. We considered that an added bonus because the pavers were kind of a salmon color? But yeah, just know that it’s a possibility!
Some things I still need to troubleshoot:
1. There are some lower lying areas that I need to go back and level. The PermaSand isn’t like concrete, so this shouldn’t be too difficult. But in one area towards the end of the patio, water tends to pool up when it rains, and when it clears, there’s some dirt and debris in that spot. Usually, I remedy this by hitting it with the leaf blower or a broom. This is me just nitpicking. It’s not a huge deal! Just something I’d like to get to eventually.
2. Part of the border around the patio has sunken because our neighborhood has a mole problem. I’ve already fixed it once, but these suckers are aggressive so it’s messed up again. Luckily, it’s a pretty small portion of the border that you wouldn’t typically walk on, but I need to figure out how to deal with it because it could become a hazard!
3. I think the excess PermaSand that I blew off of the pavers might have killed the grass just outside of the patio? I didn’t read anything about that in the reviews, but there definitely is not as much grass in that area as there was before we started this project, so…IDK.
4. The PermaSand in the gap between the pavers and the aggregate is kind of chipping away. Again, not a big deal. It’s under the maximum joint size, so not sure what’s going on there. We didn’t have a gap previously because there was spacing between all of the pavers, but when we relaid them, we pushed them right up next to each other, hence the larger spacing between the aggregate and the pavers. This is more cosmetic than anything.
She loves it!
PROJECT BREAKDOWN
COST
Approximately $90. We used the existing pavers, which saved us a ton of money. We purchased 3 tubs of PermaSand and 1 bag each of Paver Sand and the Paver Base (which have solely been used in the corner where the moles are viciously attacking my efforts but WHATEVER).
SKILL LEVEL
Medium
EFFORT LEVEL
Ummmm I think I made it pretty clear that this project is a buttkicker, but there are varying factors that can indicate what kind of effort will be required for your project — the square footage of the patio and the size of the pavers. Also, we were able to kind of get away with not doing much of the necessary prep work because our patio was already laid and there wasn’t anything holding it in place (except for weeds LOL). Leveling and pitching the patio (pro tip: AWAY from your house) can be difficult, and you may decide this is a job for the pros.
