The true cost of DIY paver patio

Impulsive Backyard Magic: The Story of Our DIY Paver Patio

Last year we built a paver patio in one weekend on a whim. We love it and use it regularly. But as with any DIY  project this one turned out to be a bit more expensive than we anticipated at first.

Unexpected discovery

Let me backup a bit and start from the beginning. We were planning our pool build and rented the sod cutter to remove some soil and level the ground. While we were at the Home Depot we noticed that concrete pavers were on a great sale at only $0.26 per piece! I mean what can you buy for 26 cents?! We quickly jumped to an idea of building a paver patio for our fire pit area.

The waiting game begins

At first we wanted to buy the paver and just load them in our pickup truck, but we needed a full pallet of them which is almost 700 pavers. Yes, these are small pavers, but boy are they heavy! Long story short the pallet weight is more than you can safely put into a bed of 1500 Dodge Ram. We tried to see if any of the Home Depot rental trucks can handle this weight, but no luck, so we had to opt out for a home delivery and wait for a few days. 

Prep, plan, repeat

I love spontaneous projects, but I also love to be prepared. So while we waited for the pavers and sand to be delivered we did some research and realized we needed some additional items, so we ordered these too. These additional items increased our budget but definitely made the whole process go much faster and at the end we think it was worth the investment.

Patio Math

Here is a detailed cost breakdown for our 10 by 10 feet patio build:

• Concrete pavers – 672 for $170
• Paver Sand – 13 bags for $60
• Paver Base – pack of 10 for $225
• Patio Edging – $90
• Weed barrier – $45
• Home Depot delivery – $80
• EZ Sand – $40

Total – $ 710

There’s always something extra

We did buy a wheelbarrow on Facebook Marketplace for $25 to help us move the pavers, but because we are keeping the wheelbarrow and have since used it on other projects I’m not adding that to the cost breakdown. We didn’t need any special tools for this project and used what we already had: tamper, rubber hammer, shovel, a leaf rake, water hose.

More Than Just Money

Even though we went over our initial budget of $500, we love how it turned out and we know that we saved a lot by doing it ourselves. Several of our friends thought we hired someone to do it and were shocked to hear that it was a weekend DIY project.

We love improving our backyard and hosting our friends and family, so spending an extra $210 was absolutely worth it!

If you want to see step by step build of this patio check out DIY FIRE PIT PATIO BUILD!

I hope you got inspired and are ready to tackle your next DIY project!

Hugs,

Hanna