From Deck to Patio!

We have enjoyed our large L-shaped wooden deck for many years.  It has been a nice gathering place when friends and family come to visit.

Tom built it himself more than 20 years ago, and it has held up quite well over the years.  However, we recently decided that we would dismantle our wooden deck and replace it with a stone patio.

The dismantling of the old wooden deck did not take long at all.  Tom went to work with a pry bar....

 ...popping up each board, then flipping it over to remove the nails...

...I helped him hammer out all the old nails out of the boards.  We also saved all the good boards, stacked them out back to use later when we build a new stoop/steps outside the kitchen door onto the carport.

He dismantled one section (approx. 12' X 12' sq. ) at a time before beginning on the next section.

 Gradually, one board at time the deck was disappearing.....

 ...until it was totally gone!   Remember our house used to be that dark green color like that bottom there that's been hidden under the deck.  There is also a water faucet attached to the front of the house, with a water hose snaking along the ground.  We decided we would have a plumber come and move that faucet for us so we would not have that water hose laying across our new patio.

We decided to go ahead and get a farm (no-freeze) hydrant, installed in both the front and the back of our house.  Yea, no more leaky faucets!

 Tom used his garden tiller to till the ground up twice before we began leveling the base for the new patio.

Then we ordered four cubic yards of white rock/caliche, and the dump truck came and dropped it and we used  shovels and wheelbarrows.....

 ...back and forth, one load at a time, then spreading it to 3-4 inches deep....

 ...until we had the area covered.   Yea, one more step is finished in preparation for our new patio!

 Next, we used this heavy tamper to tamp down the white rock/caliche before we could spread the next layer........sand.

We ordered two cubic yards of sand, the dump truck delivered it, and we went to work with shovels and wheelbarrows once again,

 one load at a time.....

 ...then using a rake to spread it to a couple of inches thick...

 ....until we had the area sufficiently covered.

Then we made the first of many trips to the Terrell Wal*Mart to purchase the three different sizes of Pavestone blocks that we planned to use.  Pavestones are heavy and we felt that about 400 stones at a time was all the weight that our old 1996 model truck could carry.

 It was work to load them into the truck, then work to unload them once we got home with them.  This process took longer and was harder physically than the actual installing the stones on the ground.  In the end we discovered that installing the stones was the easiest part.  All the prep work of the ground, the base, etc. was more difficult and time-consuming.

 We were pretty excited to get the first small section done!  Yippee!!

Now it's back to the store for another load of Pavestones. 
Not just once but several more trips, about 400 stones at a time, bring them home, unload them, install them....

 ...then back to the store for another load of stones...just like we did one shovel full, one wheelbarrow full, now it is one stone at a time....

 ...with Tom laying most of the stones while I carted them from the back of the pickup and stack them by his side.  He could place them almost as quick as I could bring them to him! 

 Tom placed the first stone in the patio (and almost all the others too!) but he let me have the honor of placing the final brick!

 Yea!  The last brick/stone! 

And it looks so pretty!  But you see those black buckets sitting on the front step?  That is polymeric sand.  That is the finishing touch.  It will take five of those 40 pound buckets of polymeric sand spread across the surface of the stones, and swept into every crevice..... 

 ...then using the shower setting on the hose wand, Tom saturates the surface completely. 

After 24 hours it will set up enough that we can walk across the patio, but we will have to wait 72 hours before moving the picnic table, bench, glider or pot plants onto our new patio.

Our goal is to not crowd too much onto the patio....we are enjoying the open space.  The decorating is an ongoing project!

We are also repairing some of our existing stone walkways and maybe adding a short connecting walkway from the corner of the new patio to the old walkway.  There is always more to do.  But right now we just love having this new patio!