Patio Project

I love that I have a first floor apartment because we get a larger patio area than the 2nd and 3rd floor apartments. The downside of the patio layout is that it's not a complete rectangle so it's harder to place furniture.

We decided to buy some bricks and fill it in! We bought 12 x 12 bricks from Lowe's for 97 cents each. To get started we first had to rake all the leaves and add more dirt so the bricks would be level with the concrete slab.

We laid the bricks but realized the dirt we added was too soft, and the bricks were shifting and tipping when we walked. Because we live in an apartment and will need to remove the bricks when we move out, we couldn't make this a permanent patio addition. To stabilize the bricks, we wet the dirt and used a tamper to condense and strengthen the dirt. Then we added gravel on top of the dirt and put stakes in the ground at each edge of the bricks to keep them from sliding around.

And voila! A larger patio! (some of the bricks are wet in this picture, that's why they're discolored) Now I can spread my patio furniture out more and have space to add more chairs when we have guests! Once we figured out the best way to make the bricks stay put (by consulting with my Dad - he has infinite wisdom with home improvements) this project only took us about 2 hours and cost about $30 for the bricks, dirt and a rake. We borrowed the tamper and mallet from my dad and he gave us the stakes and gravel, which were left from a previous project. We could have made do with just using our feet probably to flatten the dirt and a hammer for the stakes.

4th of July!

Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July! Mine was great and spent with loved ones. We had a BBQ at my aunts house and a mini photo shoot. Check them out below :)