SOCIAL MEDIA

Monday, March 23, 2020

Our New Brick Paver Patio

Good morning friends! I know we have all been hoping and praying for the end of this to be in sight. Praying for our healthcare workers, praying for our government (and the governments of other countries) to find an answer to how to stop this, and of course praying for the people who have been infected or who have family members who've been infected. It feels so weird to be writing a post about "normal life", but at the same time, I find myself needing something that isn't a discussion on this virus. Last week I found myself getting consumed by the news and felt it was having a noticeable effect on my overall attitude and demeanor. By no means am I trying to "pretend this doesn't exist", but I do need to try to find a balance of normal life again.

Over the weekend we got to knocking a big project off our to-do list: a new brick patio. Our patio in our backyard is one of the places we spend most of our time. We play with chalk out here, do art on this patio, play with the kids water table/water toys, etc. It's also a great place to sit with a cup of coffee in the morning and listen to the birds sing while the kiddos aren't up yet. The one problem with it? It was made of concrete and kind of an eyesore. 

Devin and I first bought this house when we were newlyweds and as many of you know, newlyweds aren't typically swimming in a whole bunch of cash. We were fortunate enough to buy a big house in a wonderful area of Charlotte, but in order for that house to be in our price range... it came with some things that were less than ideal. It would've been a great house for Chip and Joanna Gaines to come in and "Fixer Upper" for us 😀. Over the past 6 years we have been chipping away at some of the projects but still have quite a lengthy to-do list. One of the few benefits of being quarantined for weeks on end is that we HAVE to be home, with a lot of time on our hands. Meaning, it's time to check off some projects on the to do list! Several Youtube tutorials, articles, and a friend who's done this before (multiple times!) led us to believe we could tackle building our brick paver patio... so we did!

 We forgot to take a "before" picture, so my apologies for the first picture being part way through the project! Devin began by using Sakrete Mortar mix to mortar in the brick pavers we bought around the edges. 
 Then they put down the paver sand and MacGyver-ed a piece of wood to use for leveling the sand. I had been browsing Pinterest for weeks to try to determine which pattern we wanted for our bricks and while initially I wanted a herringbone pattern, we decided our skill level was more on par with the basketweave pattern. 😀
Herringbone is beautiful, but a lot more work! We liked the basketweave pattern a lot too.
 Here are Devin and his friend putting our patio together. They were working safely, trying to give each other distance by working on separate parts of the patio.

After getting all the bricks set in place, they brushed the polymeric sand into the cracks and sprayed it with the hose to set it.
Our final product! We have to let it "set" for 72 hours before we can put our furniture on, but be ready for some pictures of everything once it's all set back up soon! 

See you back here on Wednesday for What's Up Wednesday!

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