Building a Patio - Part 5

When I went to the Paver Systems paver yard to pick up the paver edging I needed, I ended up buying the wrong kind. I knew Paver Systems sold Snap Edge products and I wanted to buy the Paver Edge Restraint. The woman at the yard led me astray and I ended up with Sta-Right Landscape Edging. Fortunately, this landscape edging did not have the huge rings like the ones you find at Home Depot so we were able to make them work.

We started laying the landscape edging on top of the limestone and thought that we needed to lay the entire border of the edging before laying down the mason sand. We found out later that we were wrong.

TIP: When you lay down the landscape edging, you can either put the base of the edging under the sand and pavers or facing away from the sand and pavers. Both ways work just fine.

TIP: When you lay down the landscape edging on a square or rectangular patio, only lay down two edges to start in the shape of an "L". The two edges will allow you to lay the pavers out toward the other 2+ edges. You can lay the rest of the edging once all the pavers are laid. Otherwise, you'll probably end up moving the edging once you're done laying the pavers and doing the same job twice.


Once we finished laying the edging was down it was time to start on the mason sand. This step was surprisingly easy if you don't count needing to haul 50 bags of mason sand from the front driveway to the back yard. Due to the width of the patio we needed to screen the sand over one half of the patio at a time. We laid down the three 1 in. diameter PVC pipes along the limestone and started laying down the sand. Similar to the limestone, we put down a bit of sand, ran the 2x4 over it to screen it, and moved on to the next segment.

TIP: For those not familiar with the procedure, the reason you use the PVC pipe is because you know that you need an inch of sand. So by laying 1 in. PVC pipe down on the limestone and running a 2x4 over the sand and pipes until you see the tops of the pipes you know you have 1 in. of sand.

We moved the pipes as we went along and once we finished laying the sand across the entire area, we removed the pipes for good.

TIP: If you have a wide patio and cannot reach all of the pipe tunnels where there is no sand, don't worry. Just fill in the tunnels as you lay down the pavers. This keeps you from needing to walk on the screened sand.


We finally had the patio to the point where it was time to lay down the pavers. In my next post, I'll discuss laying the pavers and the lessons I learned along the way.