DIY: Create Your Own Outside Living Space – Our New Patio Reveal!

Hello friends,

I hope this week you are all doing well. I am so excited to share with all of you about our DIY:  Patio as I know I had promised to share all about it quite a while ago.  It’s been over all an uneventful spring here but like usual typically busy because we are in the gardening full force season and it’s go, go, go as usual!  I finally am able to take some time to share about our new patio that the Viking in my life built for us last year but this is the first summer that we are really getting to use it and I love it.  I hang out back all the time these days when I’m not at work of course ;).
This was not our most frugal DIY project but I do want to share with all of you how it turned out, why we decided to build it ourselves (meaning the Viking), and why we decided on this particular style. ;It may help save you time when you are doing your own research.

Pre-Patio
When we originally bought our house it came with an awesome deck and pool and even a deck behind the pool and a hot tub…it was all awesome but it was all aging and after some time the deck by the pool started rotting quite terribly and we knew we had to do something.

Our Options
 Build a new deck ourselves and pull a permit and our initial estimate was over 3500.00 for us to build it ourselves.
Slowly replace the deck one board at a time and basically restore it….this would be time-consuming and not address some of the issues we wanted resolved.
Build a patio the option I was most excited about because I felt it afforded us more privacy as the deck sat us up more at fence level.  It would also get us closer to the garden so we could keep an eye on everything we have going on and growing up!

Blessings
We also had some blessings happen that helped us in this process as well.  The first of which my brother in-law stayed with us for a bit and he offered to take the deck down for us.  Those of you who know the Viking and I both work full-time and he often is busy with projects and of course I’m always volunteering so this was truly a blessing and he took it down very fast!  It certainly provided motivation for us to get moving but then our family had to deal with illness and a sad time so we hit a stall on our progress.
The next blessing was that my husband won some gift cards to a local home improvement store so this kept our patio costs down significantly.

We Decided To Build A Patio – Would We Need A Contractor?
So we knew we were definitely going to build a patio!  We were so excited!  Were we going to hire a contractor or would we do it ourselves?
I just called a couple of contractors to get an idea of the cost on a very small patio and I knew we would be doing this ourselves and my husband agreed.

Time For A Patio – What Style?
The Viking really wanted to build a custom patio out of rock and cut it piece by piece and place it just so.  This seemed like a monumental task to me and I wondered with all he had on his plate if he would actually ever have time to get it all done.
I wanted to go the cheapest route and just buy the cheapest all one size cement and just get this baby done!
We compromised eventually on a pre-poured style from our local hardware store but it had some nice color to it and we used different shapes of them to give the patio a more custom look!  These are not inexpensive.

The Cons
We should have ordered all the materials at once. We picked up a couple of loads of concrete forms in my fairly new SUV and it made the entire inside of the car dusty. Also all of the pre-formed concrete ended up breaking my husband’s wheel barrel.

What Size Would Our Patio Be?

We really wanted to keep our patio the footprint of our deck which meant it was going to end up being pretty huge. It actually ended up being a little bit bigger than our deck at 14 X 23  and it’s now a nice outdoor living space.  It is not mosquito proof so we do keep a fan out on the patio to keep the air moving.

We made this decision because of us wanting to have a large area to entertain and to keep the patio going all the way up to the hot tub for convenience and on the other side it went all the way up to the grill pad. We also really wanted to have a space to commune with nature and immerse ourselves in the garden and this really does that for us.

How Much Would this Set Us Back?
We are not the best at keeping track but because of the gift cards we won and Eric’s brother helping us with the removal of the former deck the patio cost us out of pocket under $500.00 and that just doesn’t happen every day. I was truly grateful! Also before you take on a project like this know that this took us most of our Summer 2016 so if you have the money for a contractor than indulge yourself but if you are hoping to place a large patio in for under $1200.00. It is definitely doable….just put it on your list and persist!

I wish you all a beautiful week….until next time!

Be Well,