Patio progress - part 3: The final push

SBB has been a real trooper, working on the patio, setting up jobs as part of his new business, constructing a new fence for the driveway, digging out the Mother of All Roots, digging a test hole to look at the foundations, breaking up a concrete path and pouring a new one... Like I said, a real trooper.

He's finished the patio and I'm absolutely thrilled with it.

Laying the slabs

Finished!

First steps on the (dry) patio

A couple of days after SBB had finished the patio we both got a bit of a bee in our bonnet about the state of the path (see huge ugly blue tarp etc in above photo) so we had a tidy up and it was like a huge weight was lifted off our shoulders. Then SBB decided to fill in the empty triangle with gravel. It's starting to feel a lot more finished now (just ignore the horrible red paint stains on the wall, I need to power-wash those off).

So, there it is. Did you see the flower pots? I went for some plain terracotta pots in the end. I didn't want to draw attention away from the feature wall (which is the real star of the show) plus, they were also two for £9. Bargain.

But.

Did you notice the deliberate mistake? You may remember that in my part 2 update I mentioned the pattern I was planning (lavender, forget-me-not, herb pot, forget-me-not, lavender). Slight problem with that, which I only realised when I put the plants in the four terracotta pots I'd bought. I have three forget-me-not plants - you can see the third one attempting to hide behind the loose stones on top of the wall. Oops. I may have to have a rethink.

Patio progress: Part 2

 

It's finished! We're calling it the 'rustic' look.

Just kidding.

After much discussion SBB and I discarded our idea to add a square and a motif as we previously planned. I've bowed entirely to SBB's expertise for the patio design. I think we're both still a bit gutted about our herringbone pattern idea we had way back in August last year. The problem that we have, now that won't be laying bricks, is that the square isn't the right size for whole patio slabs to sit neatly - we'll have to put in some cut ones. We had thought that the cobbles/motif would alleviate the problem but after much measuring SBB decided that, in fact, it would only make it worse.

We nipped down to B&Q and looked at what they had to offer and then browsed the internet to see if we could find any better, for cheaper. We couldn't so one afternoon we went back to B&Q and bought some slabs which, by a happy mistake with barcodes were cheaper than we'd thought.

Now that the patio is coming together my thoughts have started to turn towards plants and plant holders/pots.

We went to a nursery to pick out some plants - I think it's called Forest View but I call it Narnia because it just goes on and on. SBB laughed a little when I first told him about it but when we went to get the plants he said, "Ah, I completely see why you call it Narnia now"

(If you go there, let me know if you see what I mean!)

I'm thinking of four or five pots to go along the wall - an evergreen (the lavender), a colourful pot (the Forget-me-nots and something else) a herb pot, then a colourful pot and another evergreen. The problem is, I'm not sure which pots to get. SBB isn't keen on anything too stylised or modern so would prefer some nice terracotta pots but I'm worried that the area may be a little too 'orange'

It's not entirely clear in this photo but the slabs are a sort of creamy yellow, so with that in mind here are the options I've spotted so far:

Dunelm Mill

Dunelm Mill

B&Q

B&Q

B&Q

B&Q

B&Q

B&Q

B&Q

B&Q

So. Those are the choices. Any ideas?

Patio progress (and oh, WHAT progress)

Remember when I was dreaming of patios? Well SBB has made quite a bit of progress. In fact, he was a little shocked when I showed him the original post from August of last year - not for how it looked but because he thought he'd started work on it much earlier and in fact spent a couple of minutes telling me how my post was wrong. Erm...

Anyway, we've made quite a bit of progress (I say 'we' I mean 'he'). First up was to lay a concrete base. SBB did this at the end of August and destroyed a pair of trainers in the process of laying the first half (luckily he wore wellies the second time)

First steps on the patio!

Next was to build the wall to hide the ugly concrete path. It took us a couple of back-breaking weekends to source the stones and we added the ones we bought to the small stock that we had left over from the old rockery.

 Isn't it so pretty?

 SBB found a heart-shaped stone and set it in the centre. He's such a romantic :)

This was such a good find. It's an old fragment of gravestone that we found under an overgrown hedge. For a while we weren't sure what to do with it but as soon as we decided we were going to build a stone wall there was only one option.

So that was it for last year. The winter set in and building work ceased, waiting until for better weather. Now that's it's spring of course, SBB has a patio-shaped-bee in his bonnet however, there was a problem. We hadn't bought enough bricks to lay the entire patio and they had been discontinued. No herringbone for us, then.
We threw some ideas around and eventually decided upon a slab/cobble/motif combo.

SBB set out the brick border and then filled the cavity behind the wall with rubble before topping it with muck and smoothing it over.

We then grabbed a couple of bags of gravel (the wood's there to keep it from spilling onto the path).

We didn't use as much gravel as we thought so the rest will be going down in this awkward little corner - along with something else that I'm going to keep as a surprise!

So that's all so far. We managed to source some broken bricks so SBB will be laying those and then we'll have to shop for some slabs to go down!
I confess that this progress is starting to make me think of BBQs....

Dreaming of patios

Why is it that you can never find the photos you're looking for? I've been trying to search out some decent pictures of the flat to follow on from my first post about how it used to look. However, I just can't seem to find them. I have an idea that they might be on a different computer so I'll have a look and hopefully I should have them to post next week.

So, to patios! I am of course talking about a patio at the bungalow. When we first bought the place the area next to the conservatory (complete with small sloped patio) looked like this:

 

Then I decided to attack clear the area and it started looking a bit like this:

 

Then SBB got involved and cleared the lot in an impressive, and enviable, short time:

 

Over the next couple of months SBB took out that mammoth bush (which can be seen in the top left of the above photo) took out that ghastly railing and broke up the existing patio and the steps (in the top left corner). He then set out the place for the new patio with boards and we were ready for aggregate. But, for the next two years the empty muddy space of our patio was abandoned in favour of other, more pressing projects, and our 'patio' became overgrown and looking a little sorry for itself. Until recently.

About a week ago SBB decided to start shifting the dirt pile remaining from when he leveled the area and the concrete that had been broken up. I started to rip up all the weeds, brambles and these weird velvety yellow flowers that smelt of cheap lemon washing up liquid. There were also stinging nettles and, despite my care to remove them without coming into contact with them, on lifting out one stem with the clippers one end happened to get stuck on a trailing vine and the other end duly wacked me on the arm. Ouch.

This is how the area looked yesterday.

We've spent today taking the rest of the dirt/concrete to the tip and clearing the rest of the weeds/grass and now the area is finally complete. Yay!

Naturally our thoughts have turned to what the patio would look like. We wanted something simple, but with character. Something neutral but not boring. Something without texture but not plain. And we wanted it all to come in at a cheap price. We initially started looking at paving slabs but with the average price coming in at £20 per m2 (for a 20m2 space) things began to look shaky.

SBB suggested a design with bricks to pad out the paving slabs and therefore costing us less. He liked the look of something like this or this. And I liked them but something just wasn't quite right. Then I saw this little beauty and my heart did a little pitter patter.

'Could you do something like this?' I asked. Not only did he say yes but suggested he could even do herringbone.

'Really?' I gasped, excited and hopeful. He sighed and muttered something about how it was typical that I wanted something that would be hard work. 

THEN I noticed this and pointed it out to him as a possible edging option. And by 'possible' I mean 'I really like it, can I have it please please pretty please?'

We really like the idea of having it in yellow brick rather than red so we probably wouldn't go for a different colour/darker brick to edge it as in the link above. It was only after I settled down happily to drool over herringbone brick patios that I realised our final idea is nothing like our original plan but I'm really looking forward to it. Not only will it incorporate SBB's skills (and that man does darn good brickwork!) but it will be special and completely unlike anything our family/friends have. I anticipate a few covetous stares...