A Quick DIY Paver Job

Who EVER EVER EVER would have thought I would cover DIY projects on this blog? Not the pre-Ryan Bekah, that's for sure! But I'll tell you what: having a handyman husband is a delight, even if it means the projects sort of continue on and on! I appreciate his hard work and vision for making our home beautiful on a budget.

Thanks for all the garage floor love yesterday. Glad you liked the outcome as much as we did!

And no, the garage still isn't completely reassembled, so my initial plan to reveal that today will have to wait until next week.

BUT NEVER FEAR!!! We did another project last night. Yep. A whole project in one night.

We have a patio area that we just love, because it's nice and private, and when we moved in, it had outdoor carpet covering the concrete slab.

It wasn't anything spectacular, but it was just fine. Well, it was fine until the first big wind. And then we learned that the tape holding the carpet to the concrete slab had rotted, and the carpet blew right off the slab. After a couple of windy days and trying to push the carpet back in place, we just ripped it off and threw it away. And that left us with this lovely taped and stained slab:

We tried to dress it up, but you can only ask so much of an old door, some flowers, and a rug, you know.

So Ryan's initial plan to fix this issue was to call a concrete stamping guy and see if he could add more concrete over what existed and stamp a pattern into it and call it done. But then we realized that if that ever cracked, we'd have to start the whole thing over and that's such a pain.

So plan B was to go to Lowe's and get stone pavers - the kind with a pattern in them - and lay those over the concrete slab. Then if one cracked, we could just replace it.

A few nights ago, we were at Lowe's pricing pavers and sand and all the things you need for a project of this magnitude, when across the aisle...I spied...

...Rubberific pavers. I had never heard of them before! Have you?

They are made of 100% recycled rubber...the same stuff the rubber mulch is made from, actually. They won't crack or freeze, their website says, and the grooves on the bottom channel water.

And guess what else?

THEY'RE REVERSIBLE!

So for the price of one paver, you can choose either design and have it with one quick flip! This duo design comes in brown and red. We got the red. There's also a cobblestone design that comes in brown and gray. {Our store didn't carry that one so I've not seen it in person.}

Ryan said they did recommend using an adhesive to secure these to your patio, but since ours is enclosed, we elected not to. Plus, we don't have kids, so it's just the two of us walking around on them. But they don't skid or slip, and we like that! And we also liked not purchasing sand and other things to add to it like we would have for the regular pavers. And these just feel so much nicer underneath your feet!

We did have to do one bit of maintenance on them as we installed them. The side we wanted to use had frayed edges from how they were cut in the machine, so we had to snip off the frayed part.

It wasn't hard...just time-consuming. We eventually worked out a system where I cut the edges of most of them and Ryan ripped the staples {that held the tag} out and then he put them in place. He said some weren't 100% square, which again, was probably just a machine cutting issue, but only one was so "off" that he deemed it unusable.

They went down pretty quickly:

{You're welcome for that picture, by the way.}

Ryan was a little unsure, at first, how he felt about the fact that not every paver was exactly the same shade of red.

I should say that if our store would have had unlimited quantities of these in stock, he would have pilfered through the entire pile to find exactly as many as he needed in the same shade. But since they only had a handful more than we needed, we bought what they had.

But in the end, I think the multiple shades gave it depth and character.

What do you think?

We love it!

I loved it most that the project could be entirely completed in ONE NIGHT. And I think it just dresses up the whole patio so much.

I also love it that our projects are dwindling.

Thanks for reading along with our adventures!!!