Could use your help about a patio, please!

[TigH]

My sister moved into her house last year. The previous owner was a very sweet 92 year old lady. She had a lawn service to mow her lawn, but that's about it. The landscape is overgrown and in need of much TLC!

There is a patio (if you could call it that) right outside the room my sister is using as her bedroom. There are several shrubs and lots of vines and weeds and spider plants and who knows what growing in this area. We plan to relocate the shrubs to another part of the yard, remove the concrete pavers that are already there, prepare the area for new pavers, and then create the patio with 12" x 12" plain concrete pavers.

My husband and my father are going to build a lattice privacy screen for the patio (only need it for two sides). We have a decent idea of what we want. I found a REALLY nice patio picture on the Better Homes and Garden site, and it's a little more complicated than the original plan.

Sorry to ramble on. What I'm looking for is some websites with photos of finished patios. So far the best one I've found is the BHG site, but I've exhausted all their slide shows/photos. I have searched on patio design, patio ideas, patio decor, outdoor living, and a few other key words that I have forgotten!

Do you have any links to any neat sites with lots of gardening/patio photos? Is there something I am missing? I've tried other online magazine (country living, southern living, coastal living...) and they didn't have what I was looking for.

Thanks for your help. She is working with a $400 budget and part of that goes towards plants and mulch. We are providing the labor, so that should help. We are also getting free sand from a guy my husband works with (has a large sandbox he wants to get rid of!) I will post pictures of the progress.

 

[Snowwark]

What size of patio does your sister want, TigH?

It sounds like you've done a pretty thorough investigation. I'd love to see the picture from the BH&G site, can you post it or a link to it?

I'll see if I can find anything else for you!

 

[TigH]

Hi, Kim!

We have a ballpark idea of the patio dimensions. The total area will be about 10 x 17 or 18, but not all of that is going to be covered with the pavers. The pavers will start where the patio meets the house, and then maybe go out about 8 feet from the house. Then we'll have a mulched area/flower bed from the patio edge about 3 feet wide. That will be where we install the lattice privacy screens.

Anyway, if I do this correctly, you'll see the two pictures that have been part of the inspiration:

The picture below gave birth to the idea that we'd have some type of lattice "door" frame leading from the yard to the patio.

This picture was the inspiration to do the checker board pavers:

Today we were lucky enough to score some free sand!!! DH's coworker bought a house with a large sandbox in the back yard. He's been trying to give the sand away for a year, so we took him up on his offer today.

Hopefully we'll start work on the patio in the next few weeks and I'll have some good before/during and hopefully after pictures of things to share!

 

[Rajah]

Neat!! The bad thing is, you just gave me ideas.

Have fun!!

 

[Snowwark]

Oh my, Karen!! I love both of those patios/rooms!

I love the lattice "framing" in the first one, also, well...just about everything!

The checkerboard in the second pic is a wonderful idea. Are you going to be painting some of the pavers? I was thinking that they were probably that very light grey, is that right? Beautiful...beautiful...

I think I have the same problem now that Rajah has....hmmm....