My first Patio install

[Gilla Gorilla]

Here is some before and after pics. The patio was raised about 16 inches on the back side furthest away from the house and was 12' X 12'.

All I have to say to you guys that are looking into doing paver work is put the bid together and then multiply it by 1.5 at least so you dont loose you ass like I did. But hey it was a great learning experience and hopefully now I can start to make some good money doing these kind of installs in the future.

Thanks for looking

[Gilla Gorilla]

and another pic while in progress

[Gilla Gorilla]

I screwed up and forgot to take into account that there needed to be a cap on the top row of the wall blocks. I reliezed this after we already had the three walls up three blocks high. So we had to improvise instead of taking the walls back down I just added two rows of caps high. It is not the best look but hey it works and the customer has know idea what happened and has not mentioned anything about the double high caps

[Gilla Gorilla]

Here is a pic with most of the pavers installed

[Gilla Gorilla]

and another with most of the pavers down

[Gilla Gorilla]

One with all of the pavers down

[Gilla Gorilla]

And the last one for tonight

[NNJLandman]

Looks very good for your first patio job, i don't care for that double cap thing but like you said it was a mistake, oh well, as long as the customer is happy, good job keep up the good work.

Jeff

[D Felix]

Looks good, but I'm not completely "sold" on the double cap either.:)

You really should have buried at least 1/2 of the base course, btw. I hope you are planning on bringing up the grade in front of the wall a bit. You need some embedment for stability purposes......


Dan

[Gilla Gorilla]

Yeah Dan I was planning on bringing in some more stone dust in front of the back wall. I will probably build it back up to the top of the second block from the ground next week. I would have preferred only one row of caps but you gotta do what you gotta do some times right.

Thanks

[GreenMonster]

What Dan said about the grade in the front.

Yeah, caps are a little funky, but like you said, do what you gotta do. Looks good.

Another thought for the error would have been to lay one more course of stone, eliminate the cap, and "glue" a soldier course of pavers to the top of the blocks.

what was total cost to customer?

p.s. "cute" skidsteer. I considered a real compact one, but thought it just wouldn't be able to handle enough. I still would be real handy for tight areas, though.

[landscapingpoolguy]

what about steps?

[MJLsLawnCareNmoreLLC]

Looks good especially for your 1st patio. Some things to improve on or that I dont really care for is: The two really contrasting colors, no steps, and around the curve you can really see where you cut the blocks. Other than that the patio looks super level and where is should be which is the most important.

[MJLsLawnCareNmoreLLC]

By the way what did you do to get the pavers so flat for the patio floor?

[Gilla Gorilla]

Thanks for the advise guys. The Bobcat was about worthless when it was time to do the excavating up to the house, the ground was so wet and it did not have enough azz to get a good bite. I would say that I was only able to get about two buckets full when using it, the rest was hand dug by myself and helper and it really did not help things since it was on a decent slope.

Green Monster, as far as cost I will not even go into the total dollar amount. Lets just say that the estamite that I am going to give my neighbor for a little 90 sq ft rounded walkway has gone from $1700.00 up to $2700.00 from what I learned on the first patio. I will be able to start making money on hardscapes from now on :)

I did go back out today and put more stone dust up to the back of the wall and sides and then brought the grade up to the bottom of the top wall block and put some seed down for him to start watering.

MJ for the floor being so flat I made sure that we took our time when it came time to screeding the concrete sand. My helper kept getting frustrated becuase I kept making him rescread every couple of feet till it was perfect. As far as the pavers them self when there was some high spots we just waited till all of the pavers were in place and then just pounded the hell out of them with a couple of dead blows to get them down to level with the rest. I took off alittle bit of skin from one of my knuckles a couple times by hitting the pavers so much.

It is nice to finally have it done though.