The home that we purchased in 2011 was previously owned by a small tiling company owner, who had purchased several slabs of slate, and a lot of red brick pavers. I found all of these in the woods just sat our property line, and I brought them all over to the area I wanted to dub the patio.
I wanted a free-flowing, eclectic look is both square slates, curves using the pavers, and broken pieces of the slate as well. I was looking for an imperfect organic look, and we did a GREAT job with what we had. We bought some top soil and sand to level the slates and pavers, and viola, we had a very cute patio.
But it was small. See how the one chair is positioned off the stones and 1/4 in the dirt by the stairs? It was uneven, so the coffee table is way too far away from the seating. The roots from the (Bartlett or Bradford?) pear would NOT cooperate with my vision. And you can't see it in this shot, but the drainage (lack there of) behind the love seat gave us a "natural water feature" about 6'x8' and about 6" deep in the middle. Would have been fantastic had I dug down. Lined it. And created a small pond there, but not exactly what I wanted with 2 kids under 6 and 2 dogs over 180 pounds combined.
Mr Saucy's birthday is in November, and we had friends over for a BBQ and an evening around the fire pit. Due to the number of people we were expecting, and the chillier than expected temps, we moved the chimnea to the center of the slate, and used a second layer of landscaping bricks to make the original base for the chimnea into a fire pit. It worked well, but we ended up having to move chairs into the grass to get everyone "around" the pit.
At one point earlier this spring, we had friends over, and I was mentioning that I was going the bring up all the stones and start over again to increase the outdoor living area. One of my more brilliant besties said, "Why don't you just add to what you've got? As we were again trying to cram chilly adults around 1/4 of a circle, she mentioned it would be nice to have more seating "around" the fire.
DUH.
So, I went to Facebook to the local yard sale groups and posted at I was looking for any patio stones that anyone wanted to get rid of. I didn't care the color, shape, condition... I was just going to add to the eclectic organic shapes that I already had started. I received a note from a woman who was going to redo her landscaping and had several landscaping bricks I could have. AWESOME!! Mr Saucy and I headed over there and picked them up.
So, stage 1 of this years patio began to take shape.
Looking good! But as you can see, the furniture is half on and half off. We're using a few random pavers to give support to the chairs so they don't sink into the mud. I gave up trying to go around the tree with the pavers. That damn tree shoots mini-trunks up from it's roots, and displaces the stones.
Then, the amazing landscaping fairy sent me another message to tell me she had a whole second load of landscaping stones for me, if I still needed any. HOLY AWESOME NEWS, Batman! WhooHoo!
The second load was even bigger than the first, and I honestly wondered if I could get them home in my Pilot. It was VERY VERY low on the suspension. But, we made it, and I unloaded the stones into the driveway, porch, and a few loads to the back yard. Then Mr Saucy, and Saucy Neighbor took all the rest of them to the back for me.
Here is the patio as it sits right now! The morning sun is very pretty coming in through the trees. I'm thinking of putting gravel in and around some of the edges to fill in some areas.
Next project is weeding the flower beds up front, mulching, and getting the lawn plush, beautiful, weed and bug free.
Stay hungry, get dirty, and make your spaces beautiful.
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