Has anyone put down pavers for a patio?

[mom of 3G's]

My DH and I would like to put down paver bricks for a patio in the backyard. We would like to try this ourselves. Does anybody have any tips they could give me? And if you have any photos, I would love to see them.

 

[LuvOrlando]

Sometimes do it yourself stores like Home Depot and Lowes have free clinics on this sort of home project.

I'd give them a call and see

 

[mtdevine615]

We did our patio. I must say it came out great but it was a lot of work. Did I mention it was a LOT of work. We really worked on it most of the summer. Now we live in Maine and our summers are not that long and we didn't work on it 12 hours a day on Sat. and Sun. It's a big patio 20 x 46 with fire pit and mariners compass in the middle so there were lots of etras. But it was fun and we did ourselves.

 

[Pakey]

We did it at our rental and it's gorgeous. However, it was a ton of work and more than twice the cost of a concrete patio. We did a 12 x 20 one that is covered right off the house and then we did a 12 x 12 one for the firepit area plus we put in sidewalks that run from the front to the back of the house in the side yard and connects with both patio areas.

It's a lot of work so make sure to do it right. We excavated, leveled, brought in base rock, brought in sand, compacted the sand, set the pavers, added the borders/spikes to prevent future movement, compacted the pavers, added the sand/grout, sealed, sealed, sealed.

Advice: go to home improvement store and talk to them plus buy a book that gives you pictures and instructions. The laying of the actual pavers is the easy part. The hard part is getting it leveled and providing proper drainage/compaction so that it still looks beautiful years from now.

 

[DisneyBamaFan]

...Advice: go to home improvement store and talk to them plus buy a book that gives you pictures and instructions. The laying of the actual pavers is the easy part. The hard part is getting it leveled and providing proper drainage/compaction so that it still looks beautiful years from now.

Agreed - This is the key. Be sure to do your research and you will build something that will look beautiful for years...

 

[NatashaDisneyCM]

We did it at our rental and it's gorgeous. However, it was a ton of work and more than twice the cost of a concrete patio. We did a 12 x 20 one that is covered right off the house and then we did a 12 x 12 one for the firepit area plus we put in sidewalks that run from the front to the back of the house in the side yard and connects with both patio areas.

It's a lot of work so make sure to do it right. We excavated, leveled, brought in base rock, brought in sand, compacted the sand, set the pavers, added the borders/spikes to prevent future movement, compacted the pavers, added the sand/grout, sealed, sealed, sealed.

Advice: go to home improvement store and talk to them plus buy a book that gives you pictures and instructions. The laying of the actual pavers is the easy part. The hard part is getting it leveled and providing proper drainage/compaction so that it still looks beautiful years from now.

I worked in a wholesale nursery that that dealt with landscapers, and was trained in pavers. Yes, it is a lot of work and this answer is correct, agreed about the getting level, otherwise it would be all downhill from there! lol

 

[mickeyboat]

We did our patio in pavers, and although we did it all right, we did have some heave up in places where the frost got underneath them. DH wants to pull them up at some point and do stamped concrete.

God luck to you!