Flagstone Patio

My addiction to Pinterest is amazingly dangerous. Along with that, the craftiness I pull out is never ending. Someone told me I should start blogging with all of the things I do around my house. This spring I decided that I had had enough of our backyard. We moved into our house almost 5 years ago and we always keep saying, "we'll fix this later, or do that later" as we work on remodeling the entire house from the sticks up! Gah...note to self when looking for a future house, don't just assume it's easy to change everything. 

 I wish I had taken before photos of our "Secret Garden" the old homeowner left us. I may have somewhere but I forget where I could have put the pictures. We know at one point there was an above ground pool on the property. The previous homeowner spent quite a bit of money to place in a pond and have one of every perennial planted in the old pool area. I'm sure it was very nice, but the amount of time and care to upkeep this type of garden was near impossible for two full time working adults to handle. I used to say I wanted a gazebo and a hot tub in the spot, but then it turned into wanting a flag stone patio with a fire pit. I love roasted marshmallows and want to be able to do this whenever I want in the summertime! 

 So one day I started ripping perennials out of the ground. Now mind you, I married an engineer. Once this started, Jason immediately got involved. I probably wouldn't do it right you know! Next thing I know we borrowed a friend's rota-tiller and with one minor mishap into the yard (me not using it right), we had the ground pretty tilled up.

With a hand tiller, a shovel, and a wheel barrel we began moving the dirt so we could have a 6 inch deep ground layer.

The next step was to begin the ridiculous work of offloading layers of gravel and red breeze. By the end of the weekend we could unload 2 tons of rock/dirt in 45 minutes flat. I was pretty impressed with our work. There was nothing easy about this project. Which I kept saying was going to be easy. Here's the gravel base layer. (About 3 tons of 3/4" Mountain Granite at $32.00 a ton)

Next we added 3 or 4 tons of red breeze ($25 a ton) and used an electric tamper to level the ground. (A rented tamper is well worth the $85.00 a day)

Finally, I made a little collage after we unloaded the flagstone. I was able to talk the stone company down to $215 a ton from $260. I had found it at three other places for $195 a ton. The stone company is an 8 minute drive door to door, so the extra $20 a ton was worth it. We didn't pay delivery fees  because we used the truck and my in-laws flat bed trailer to pick up 3 tons of Colorado Red thick flagstone pieces.

This weekend we are working on laying the flagstone and building the fire pit. More pictures to come later on when we are finished. For now I hope this inspires you to begin your own flagstone patio project. Just don't keep thinking it's going to be super easy because it's not!

 ***UPDATE 6/27/14***

Wow it's been a year. So this flagstone patio thing is definitely not easy. As summer dwindled down last year, I got busy prepping for the new school year. What a fantastic group of kids I had. They will surely be missed. Plus winters here in Colorado aren't always pleasant. Granted we didn't have nearly as much snow as the mountains did. It was too cold for me to be out there slaving over the patio.

Now that I'm on summer break (again), I've decided to go head on with the patio again. Here is what I was starting with. Granted we got a lot of the big pieces placed before summer was over last year.

So all those open holes was what I was determined to tackle. That lighter triangle in the middle was my first successful piece.

A pencil, some cardboard, a box cutter blade, a hammer, a crowbar, and this tool became my best friends for this project.

By the end it was just the angle grinder, a pencil, the hammer, and some earplugs. Yes don't forget to protect your lovely ears! I apologize to the neighbors now for all the ruckus I was making.

So yesterday I was thrilled to finish the last little cut in pieces! Now all we need to do is level the pieces and grout them in. I think we decided we were going to buy more red breeze but throw a polymer in to allow the lines to seal. I'm in the process of figuring out what I want for a fire pit. Do I want to build one or do I want to buy a cool caste iron bowl? 

As you can see we have a lot of left over flagstone. Those will be put to use I'm sure. Plus we need to move the dirt piles and clean up the scraps. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I'm super excited for our outdoor patio space! More will be added as we finish up!