How To: Lay Your Own Patio

When you want to enhance your garden before you sell your home, you need to consider how to make the space look more liveable. Laying a patio can look like a simple task, but that doesn't mean that it’s not a labour-intensive one. It’s a rewarding project when you finish it, but it takes time to get it right to the highest standard possible. If you find yourself unable to tackle it alone, hiring a professional service to install a fresh new patio for you is a viable solution.

You can use a patio for outside dining, to make your garden a low-maintenance space to be and enhance the value of your home, too. Of course, if you still love the idea of a lawn but you’re worried about taking care of it, you don’t have to give it up altogether; you can invest in lawn maintenance and have everything you want in a garden, including the patio. A patio takes some time to lay and you need to consider the following steps to ensure that you have the perfect patio for your garden. You have to prepare your patio properly, with the right ready-mix concrete and the right slabs to make it perfectly laid out and ready to use. However, the steps aren't just as simple as mixing concrete and laying sand and slabs. 

So, let’s take a look at how you can do it!

1. Make a plan and start drawing up the area on paper before you do anything. You need all the measurements and dimensions to ensure that your new patio is going to be in the right space. Anything in the surrounding area should be marked on the plans so that they cannot be affected when you make your changes. You should keep in mind the design that you want for your patio, too, so that you know that you have space!
   
   
2. Preparing the site is your next step. You need to lay down pegs and string to mark out the areas of the patio and bring your written plans to life. You then need to dig down around 15cm and get rid of any prepaid turf or plants in the way. If there is current paving, bring that up, too. You need the whole area to be cleared away before you start laying your own patio. Then you should use a spirit level to make sure that there are no weak spots. Pack down more soil and do this before you lay hardcore down for the patio foundations.
   
   
3. Prepare the slabs of paving ready to lay, and while this isn’t a tricky part of the plan, you need to consider that cutting and handling the paving slabs may be difficult! You should rope in some help, here, so that you’re not doing it all alone.
   
   
4. Before you put the paving down properly, you need to lay down the bedding mortar. This can help you to stabilise the land. This mortar can also hinder any weed growth your ground may be subjected to. It should be building sand and a mix of cement, and this acts as the bed on which you lay your paving stones.
   
   
5. The last step is to cut and design the paving stones and lay them. You should make sure that you leave a 1cm gap for the joint lines, though.