How To Create New and Affordable Bistro Style Patio

This is the time of year that we love here in Florida and the reason that our beautiful state continues to become more crowded and sought after than ever! We enjoy the outdoors and love our little piece of paradise that is the main reason we purchased our home over 25 years ago.
This is a before shot…it’s pretty, but I’d love for you to see what we did in the after!
flagstone patio


Before, we had a huge Royal Poinciana tree that was glorious and old and bloomed a couple of times a year with incredible orange red flowers. Prior to installing our small flagstone patio we had a wooden swingset for the kids that we bought second hand to save money…back when they were small. Fast forward to this flagstone patio that was installed by a local garden company and sat under our Plumeria tree and nestled in all of the tropical gardens that we have nurtured over the years.

 

shabby chic outdoor garden patio
plumeria blossoms
One last before…and you can see the fallen Plumeria blossoms and dirt on the flagstone that frankly was hard to keep under control. We receive so much rain and it’s often quite humid here in our area and that means mildew. Lots of mildew and lots of bleach to clean it. Yuck.

You can see more before shots HERE.

florida gardens on the water
Once the very OLD Royal Poinciana started show signs of disease and death we had a local arborist come out to check it. Kind of like people I suppose, it had become brittle and there wasn’t much hope for it. A hazard here where we get hurricanes and it overhung the water behind our home, so we had it taken down and then stump-ground to be flat.
So I planned and drew out a little sketch and talked to my husband to see how we could accomplish making this area more usable without a lot of cost. I design and he executes and that’s how it’s always worked for us all of these years that we’ve been together:-)
crushed rock patio on a budget

And the after…which is several times the size and took quite a bit of elbow grease, but not a lot of cost.

gardens and patios in miami

We ordered a palette of white crushed rock from our local tile supplier that we use for our construction business and tile supply houses often do carry other supplies…so it’s good place to check if you are thinking of something similar.

A palette held 58 bags that were about 50 lbs a piece and cost us $150 plus delivery. We did not get any sort of discount, so you might find this to be around the same in your area. My husband removed the existing flagstone and first laid it out on the ground creating an abstract circular pattern around our table and chairs. Then he dug the ground around each and set them in and filled in with the crushed rock and continued the rock outside of the flagstone as a border. The hardest part (according to him) was hauling the rock around in a wheelbarrow and the time spent was a day.

We now have an expanded beautiful new area for dining and entertaining outdoors. I couldn’t be happier and will be back tomorrow to talk a little more and tell you a sweet story about naming this area of our garden 😉

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