Hallelujah — The Patio Is Finished!

I finally caught my breath, regained feeling in most of my muscles, and can tell the end of the story: the patio is done. We left off with me passed out on mostly laid pavers late Friday night — and after a Saturday break for family time (and an early Mother’s Day), I dove back in Sunday afternoon to finish the edge cuts. My plan to spend “an hour or two” finishing the cuts stretched into seven or eight hours.

Cutting the Curves

Curved edges demand a lot of cuts, and despite some confidence from previous tiling work, this job proved more time-consuming than expected. To determine each cut, I placed a full stone against the border pavers (the so-called soldier course) and penciled in the overlap to mark where to cut.

For cutting, I used a borrowed wet saw. It served me well in past projects, but these pavers were about 2.5 inches thick and the blade wouldn’t cut all the way through in a single pass. That meant two cuts per stone (one from each side), and some long cuts required multiple passes because part of the saw blocked the stone’s travel. After cutting, I often had to split the remaining middle with a hammer and screwdriver to finish the job.

Multiply two to four cuts per paver by the 50+ stones that needed trimming and you’ll see why it took so long. By hour three, that $700 commercial wet saw started looking tempting, but being thrifty I stuck with the free one borrowed from my dad.

When a cut was accurate, I set the trimmed stone into place and tapped it gently with a rubber mallet so it settled slightly into the sand bed and matched the surrounding stones. The sand we brushed between the pavers later helped disguise some imperfect cuts, so the finished look ended up cleaner than expected.

By the end of Sunday I finished the cuts and even had energy left to re-hang a sagging gate that threatened to scrape the new stone. The white appearance on some edge pavers in the photos is simply wet saw dust that hadn’t been hosed off yet.

The Pattern

We used a repeating unit that people call an “I Pattern,” “K Pattern,” or even “H Pattern.” It’s composed of two 6 x 9″ pavers and four 6 x 6″ pavers forming an H-like shape, with 6 x 9″ pavers bordering it. We chose this layout to match the driveway pavers left by the previous owners and because it feels like organized randomness—orderly but with visual interest. The stone yard warned the pattern is slightly trickier than a purely random layout, but once we placed a couple of the H units, building out was straightforward.

Filling the Joints

On Monday I finished with the joint sand. The top dressing of sand fills the cracks so the pavers don’t shift. The basic steps were:

1) Dump sand across the pavers. 2) Push the sand around with a broom until all joints are filled. 3) Lightly mist the surface so the sand settles into the cracks. It’s a rinse-and-repeat process: I swept, misted, and repeated until the joints were consistently full and the surface looked even. The damp sand initially looked darker and a bit orange, but it dried to a complementary gray.

For long-term worry-free joints you can use polymeric sand, which sets into a hard, concrete-like seam and helps stop weeds. We skipped it to save roughly $100, using standard paver sand instead—it’s what we used on our previous patio and it held up well for years. If desired, we can switch to polymeric sand later.

Backfilling and Staging

After the sand step I backfilled the edges with dirt to hide the plastic edging. I forgot to photograph the borders after filling them, so we’ll skip to the final after shots. Before-and-after photos show the landscaping details and the completed patio with temporary furniture pulled from the house.

We staged the patio with temporary pieces so we could get a sense of scale. Our long-term vision is an outdoor living room: a daybed or loveseat with a coffee table and a sandbox/baby pool spot for Clara. The permanent dining area will go elsewhere, but this patio will be a casual lounge and play area.

Clara already enjoys tapping chalk sticks together, and though she tried to eat chalk twice, that counts as progress. The grill is the only fixture in the temporary layout that will remain permanently—once tucked away in my basement, it finally has a proper outdoor home. Sherry’s favorite finishing touch is a ceramic bird feeder she bought for $9.99 that now presides on the patio instead of the bathroom counter.

Views and Use

We’re excited for Clara to use the space safely; it’s fully gated, so it’s perfect for chalk, toys, and supervised play. The new lower patio expands our outdoor living beyond the small upper landing, making room for the grill and a cozy seating area.

Time and Budget

We estimate about 30 hours total from planning through cleanup (we spent extra time on curves and hit a lot of concrete during demo, so your mileage may vary). Here’s the budget breakdown:

• 300 square feet of Cottage Stone pavers (Southside Building Supply): $621
• Heavy-duty plastic patio edging and spikes (Southside Building Supply): $69
• Paver sand (Southside Building Supply & Lowe’s): $107
• Gravel (Southside Building Supply): $240
• Delivery for pavers, sand, and gravel (Southside Building Supply): $145
• Miscellaneous supplies (wood stakes, line levels, nylon string, and hand tamper from Home Depot): $40
• Weed-blocking fabric & crampons (Home Depot): $30
• Grand (ouch) total: $1,252*

*We actually paid $1,332 but received an $80 deposit back when we returned the bags our gravel and sand came in.

We went well beyond our original under-$1,000 goal, but we’re glad we DIY’d the project and saved nearly $4,000 compared to professional estimates, which were around $5,000 for a curved patio of this size. Was it worth the blood, sweat, and orange-stained gloves? Absolutely—though I’ll take a break before doing it again.

We wrapped up just in time to get ready for Clara’s birthday party. Fingers crossed for good weather—last year it rained, so we’re cautiously optimistic this time around. If you want to follow along with the entire patio process, we documented the project from planning and prep through installation and finishing in earlier posts.