DIY Stone Patio Landing

From the comfort of the Adirondack chairs which were perfectly relocated to the shady side of the yard, I supervised the placing of the stones.   :)

The DIY bug has taken hold.  I think a lot of it has to do with finally finding a Handyman to help us with the things we don’t dare do ourselves.   Ask and you shall receive.  Now I’m not bragging …well, maybe I am a little…but now we now have two Handymen.  Handyman #2 turned up last week.  Turns out he was the Project Manager who helped build our house 10 years ago and he just happens to be friends with Handyman #1 who recommended him to us when we asked him if he knew a gutter guy.    With the building business the way it is these days, we thought he was long gone.  Our new gutter guy, Handyman # 2, knows our house inside and out.  Probably better than we do!  It was fun to see him after all this time.  Between the two of them, Handyman #1 and Handyman #2, we should have this place in great shape in no time. 

Anyway, while the Handymen were hard at work doing the things we don’t dare try ourselves, we decided to try our hands at installing some cobblestones and make ourselves a small stone landing area at the bottom of our deck stairs. 

 

My handsome husband dug out the area and we spread the screening material to help secure the stones and make the area level.  We played around with the layout of the stones.  We had a mixture of large and small stones.  At first we wanted to curve the edges but being the green and totally un-experienced beginners that we are, we decide to stick with a more rectangular shape.  The main reason for this is that the curves left lots of gaps and spaces.  And since the last thing we wanted to do was rent a wet saw to cut the stones into smaller pieces, we went back to the safety of the square/rectangle.    Maybe we’ll tackle something curvy in the future. 

  After the stones were set, we spread more screening across the top to fill in the gaps. 

My husband swept it and then sprayed it down with water.  We have to get back to Lowe’s where we purchased our materials to get some sand.  We are going to spread some sand across the top to fill in some more after everything dries. 

 

There are lots of video’s and help out there.  Here is a link to a video on YouTube that helped us out a lot.

This was not expensive to do.  Less than $100 dollars and we that realized that we bought too many stones after we decided to abandon the curvy layout so we have about 20 that we can return. 

We still need to clean it up and get all the excess sand removed but you can get a good idea from this shot how it looks.   

Now, back to sitting in the shade with some ice cold drinks and a few magazines where we can discuss our next project.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!