Back Porch Redo

Awhile back we finally finished the little extra space on the side of the back porch for our grill! It was so easy to do, and only took us about an hour and a half! Since our patio is small to begin with and our table and chairs take up most of the room, we really needed a space for the grill! Yes, those are shutters leaning on the wall. We had to take them down when we had our hurricane shutters installed, and they are waiting to be painted before they get put back up. :) We'll get around to that one day. ;)

At first we left a little border around the edge with the rocks, but afterwards decided to go ahead and make it a little bigger by adding another row of pavers. I think this cost us about $20 to do which included the pavers and sand. Oh yeah, we bought a few pieces of sod too, to go around the edges, so that was probably $5 more, so total $25 for this project! :)

First we raked up all the weeds, grass, etc. and flooded sprayed the area with weed killer. Then, we brought in some extra dirt from the front yard, and leveled it out. Once it was leveled out we added plastic and landscape fabric on top to help keep the weeds out. On top of that we added some rocks to make it even more level. Once we pounded it flat with the tamper, it was time to add the pavers. We copied the pattern that Home Depot had laid out, and it helped so much that we took a picture of it to use as an example. I ended up changing it just a little, but in the end it worked out great! :)

Here is the finished product with the sand in between the pavers and the grill in it's new home. I probably need to add some more sand now that it's had time to settle, and water that poor grass. We had a HOT summer here, and my poor grass took a beating. But it's raining today, so FREE water! :)

I wish I had a before of how UGLY this little area was before we leveled it out and put the pavers down. Grass would never grow there for some reason, so it was also muddy, mossy and weedy. ICK!! Plus, the previous owners had this NASTY pile of wood that had been dry-rotting for forever that they left for us when we moved in. I was so glad to get rid of that mess! It's super pretty now! YAY! :)