Part 1 of Our Patio Makeover!!

Ashley Aterno
May 20, 2024
4 min read

Updated: May 23, 2024

Ever since buying our house three years ago this corner patio in our backyard has been something I've been wanting to have redone.

The cobblestone didn't bother me so much as the uneven base underneath the stones. This likely occurred over time from the poor drainage in our yard. Our yard has a slight slope to it and no French drain so makes erosion pretty common in certain areas. So this corner area would be great with some kind of retaining wall. You may not be able to see by the photo, but the back corner and area against the fence to the right is more elevated.

My plan was to build a planter box to the right side to help stop erosion by acting as a retaining wall but also add some aesthetic to the patio. Something that says, "BAM!" Haha. My overall goal is to turn this area into an outdoor theater lounge area for our family. The area also could use a slightly raised edging around the patio to help outline the area. After a lot of back and forth, I decided on wood edging. I say slightly raised because I want pea gravel as the patio base and I need to make sure that the gravel isn't going to travel all over the place but instead, stay in one area. I decided on pea gravel because it's easy to walk on barefooted. However, the con with pea gravel is that it has a tendency to travel around if not contained properly.

Above is the before photo.

The following are the supplies I used:

Supplies:

Wood planks for edging 2x4x8ft ---> x 4

wood plank 1x2x8ft ----> x 1

Miter Box

Exterior Wood screws 2 in

Exterior wood screws 1 1/2 in (for angle and flat wood to wood plate ties)

Galvanized steel angle wood tie X 2

Cinder blocks I used 39 - will explain uneven number later

Concrete block caps

All purpose gravel

Loctite (had to buy 3 times). Used more than I thought I would.

Caulk gun

Galvanized Steel Tie Plate Wood To Wood x 1

Dirt to help level ground more and also fill in planter box

Surface bonding cement

Pointed Trowel

Margin Trowel

The Patio Project: Part 1

First we started with removing all the cobblestone and we gave them away for free to whoever wanted them. And boy did people want them! Then I leveled the patio as much as I could and used the bags of dirt from Lowe's to help fill in low areas.

Then I thought about edging and bought wood from Lowe's. I bought four planks of 2x4x8ft and one of 1x2x8ft. I cut two of the wood planks at 45 degree angles using a miter saw box (I'm not quite comfortable with an electric saw so handsaw it was!). The saw box actually made everything easy and very accurate!! I also cut the 1x2x8 into 8 in pieces which provided me with approximately 12 pieces to use as stakes in the ground for edging stability. I'll explain later.

My husband then stained the pieces of wood. Then it rained like 4 hrs after but we covered everything with a tarp so nothing got messed up. Thank goodness!

Next I measured and leveled out the area i wanted to put the retaining wall/planter box. I used a flat head shovel that we already had to shovel out the area. I compacted with all purpose gravel from Lowe's while using my leveler. Next we put one row of cinder blocks down and used loctite adhesive to adhere the blocks together. This particular adhesive got tons of great reviews both on the Lowe's website and on YouTube! It works great! When we applied the second row of cinder blocks we did the exact same thing, using adhesive on top of the bottom row and sides. Next we put the cinder block caps on to make a more solid structure. You'd never know it's made from cinder blocks! The back row is half two stacks and half one row of cinder blocks because of how raised the ground was in the back. That's the reason for the uneven number of cinder blocks.

Next we purchased some surface bonding cement and mixed it with a gallon of water in the wheelbarrow. We dampened the cinder blocks. Then used a trowel to apply the cement. This actually was not as easy as I thought and I wouldn't want to do it again haha. However I love the stucco look and am very happy with how it turned out!

We misted the whole thing when finished and a couple times throughout the day to help prevent cracks while drying.

Next we worked on the edging. I lined out where I wanted the wood to lay and how then marked out the area with a shovel digging about 2 in down. To keep the wood planks in place however, I hammered down the 8 in 1x2 in pieces of wood and used wood screws to attach to the planks.

To connect the corner pieces that were cut at 45 degree angles I used a galvanized angled metal plate tie.

I used these wood screws to attach.

The edging came out looking like this which I'm very happy about. I thought that would be the hardest part of the project but no the cement was. Just very time consuming for me.