Home Improvement : Supersizing the New Patio

Looking for a house that comes with a well landscaped yard can be difficult, unless you're looking in a development that has every blade of grass planned out. Big home builders like Ryan Homes or KB Homes are examples of this type of manufactured landscaping.

We're happy enough, though, to do it ourselves and design our yard the way we want it. We had a nice patio when we bought this house; however, it just wouldn't hold both our table and chairs and our firepit, so we needed to expand it.

Ok, the first step was figuring out what pavers were originally used. Hmmm, yes, I found them (insert very happy face here!) BUT, they had been discontinued! I called around to so many places. We finally visited one landscape company that thought they might have some. We went out to their very muddy yard and found a pallet of the correct ones. We were told to be patient, that they'd go out and look for more and call me within a week. Well, I'm not a very patient person, but was kind of at their mercy. A week passed and no call. When I called them I was told that the yard was still too wet and they'd call me in a week... This went on and on for several weeks. Finally when I called them one day I was told that yes, they had them. Hmmm, I wonder how long they'd known that?? Anyway, I immediately drove up there and was thrilled that yes they did! I set up a delivery time right then and there.

We had lots of work to do to prepare the new area.

Remove the sod

Dig out everything 8"

Level the dirt, then add landscape fabric.

Add 4" of gravel

We added 2" of sand over the gravel. Level, level, and level some more.

We had to try to figure out a pattern for the pavers that matched the existing pattern.

After all of the pavers were laid, we added a special polymeric sand. We brushed that between the cracks, then went over the entire area with compactor. The polymeric sand had to be meticulously cleaned off the pavers, so we used the blower very carefully to get it off the pavers, but allowed it to stay in the cracks.

We then lightly sprayed the area with water to seal in the polymeric sand.