Building A Patio
- 3 minsMy wife and I recently moved into a new apartment. It’s a great place but the usable space on the patio is limited. The concrete slab in front of the door is about 50 square feet. However, there is nearly 150 square feet of dirt with a tree stump right in the middle of it.
I got it in my head that I could do something about that. It probably had something to do with all the HGTV that my wife and I watch.
I figured I could knock the whole project out in a weekend, no problem. To begin I headed down to Home Depot and rented a stump grinder for 4 hours. Got back home and got to work:
1 hour later…
2 hours later…
I had to take a break. Somewhere around the 4 hour mark:
Yup, I had to call and extend my rental. After around 5 and a half hours, I finally got to stump removed. But there were roots everywhere:
Spent an entire weekend just digging out roots:
Took me a long time to figure out what to do with the debris. I ended up putting it all into contractor bags and loading them up in the back of the SUV:
Delivered them to the dump:
Debris gone:
Another weekend at Home Depot. Took nearly all day just to load them up and then out again once I got home. Plus the suspension on the SUV was dangerously compressed:
Layed out the leveling sand and started paving:
Got done with all but the edges:
Cutting the pavers turned out to be trickier than I thought. Again, went to Home Depot. This time I rented an angle grinder. Bought a masonry disc. Got back home and started cutting. I got halfway through cutting one paver and noticed that my disc had completely disintegrated! So I did some research and learned that I needed to get a diamond tipped blade. Home Depot didn’t have any but I was able to pick one up at Ace Hardware.
After a day of cutting:
Next weekend spent all day driving around trying to find the perfect patio set. Ended up with this:
Added some lights:
In the end the project ended up taking enough weekends to fill a month plus a bunch of evenings after work. Also, it ended up being pricier than I expected. Heres the breakdown:
| Cost | |
|---|---|
| Stump Grinder | $150 |
| Truck rental to haul the stump grinder | $50 |
| Dump | $50 |
| Pavers | $120 |
| Leveling Sand | $80 |
| Angle grinder rental fiasco | $20 |
| Angel grinder purchase | $30 |
| Diamond disc | $15 |
| Hand tamper | $25 |
| Total | $540 |
All in all, I think it was worth it. It was a great learning experience and a lot of fun.
Andrew Backes
A man who makes things