Patio Perfection (Ok...Not Quite)
Braxton and I have been complaining for two years now about our backyard. As you can see from the pic below, we have a mess. Every time it rains the water runs off the roof and our dogs trape on the lawn turning it into a muddy mess. Now it is bare and ugly. I told Braxton that I would look for some economical solutions and I found Pathmate on Pinterest. You can click on the pinterest link to go to the blog I followed. Below, I will show you how we did it! And yay we did it!
Step 1: We placed stakes to mark our desired area.
Step 2: Braxton used a mattock to break up the grass and dirt.
Step 3: We added sand and used a rake to spread it out. Then we used a 2x4 to level out the area.
Step 4: Now here comes the hard part. We started this step at 10:00am and it was already a sweltering 92 degrees. Mix one bag of 60lb concrete with a little less than a gallon of water. Each bag fills one Pathmate mold.
Step 5: We poured the concrete into mold. We used a shovel most of the time but when the mix bucket got low we just picked it up and poured it in.
Step 6: Use a trowel to smooth out the top. Wait a minute or two then remove the mold. I used a spoon to smooth out the edges once the mold had been removed.
Step 7: Call a friend because of heat exhaustion. Ha! Braxton and I made it two rows on our own. He had mixed 10 bags of concrete by noon and was worn out. The temperature had risen to over 100 degrees. Then repeat the process a bazillion more times.
Step 8: Add sand in between cracks. You can buy paver binding sand that hardens when you add water. We had a hit and miss with this sand. The first bag worked great and hardened perfectly, but the second bag didn't harden at all. Not sure what happened. We are just going to wait until it all washes away from rain and try again.
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