DIY How To Install A Paver Walkway For Beginners!

Hi friends, welcome back to another episode of Fix This House. On today's episode, I'm going to be showing you how to easily install a paver walkway. As you can see here, we just finished building a deck for my parents' home and they actually put these pavers along the side of it. Just put planters all over it and it looks very messy. So what we're going to be doing is we're going to clean this up, install the new pavers, and I'm going to be showing you an easy DIY for beginners. So stay tuned. So if you're new to the channel, thank you so much for tuning in once again. Please consider pressing the subscribe and notification bell so you can always be in tune on DIYs, how-to videos, and product reviews. First thing we're going to do is take off these pavers and we're going to start cleaning out the edges. Now the pavers that I'll be using today are 11 and a half by 11 and a half squares and we're going to be staying away from the deck 20 inches. From our 20 inch measurement, I'm just marking it with a steel peg or you can use any type of marker that you wish. Do it the same thing on the other side and from there we're going to run a piece of string because we're going to use a spray paint later on to actually mark where the string is located. Double check your measurement. Make sure that it's nice and even all throughout across the string line just to make sure. Now I didn't have any fluorescent paint at that moment so all I could find was this black spray paint which will suffice. All we're doing is we're marking the string line so that we can easily take this string line off and we'll just go by this marking. I highly suggest using a spade shovel. This one has a nice square edge onto it, nice and flat. This will make your lines a lot straighter and a lot cleaner. As you can see this line is very hard to penetrate. It's full of rocks. Very thankful for my mom for being there to actually help me out dig this rocks and grass out of here and clean up. Yeah it will take some patience and time and I and I warn you that this video has a lot of digging into it so I'm just going to put a time lapse on a few of them and also big shout out to my dad for helping with the digging as well. The more help that you have the better and it'll make your job a lot faster for sure. Now we're taking out the excess and we're just putting it and creating it out. Now it was I was thankful last night because it actually rained and this softened up the ground a little bit so this time we're going to dig out a little around four inches deep. This is probably one of the hardest parts of this project. It's just pretty much digging out the excess dirt. Again just it just takes patience and time and make sure that once you dig this up I'm just using my spade shovel and cleaning out the edges as you go and taking my bow rake and just scooping out the excess dirt and rock. We're putting down the paver and I'm just pretty much just simulating how it's going to sit. Sometimes you got to do this. You're going to have your highs and lows. As you can see there's four inches on one side, five inches on the other. That doesn't really matter because you're going to pretty much level that out later on with your paver base. Now let's continue on and dig out the rest of the dirt. Again I'm just going to be using this quick time lapse for you friends. Again there's going to be a lot of digging on this video so just be patient with me. Now what my dad is using here it's called the tamper. It's a eight by eight weighted tamper and it pretty much flattens the ground which is really nice. If you have one use one of these transfer shovels. This is great for helping flatten the ground as well as you take out the excess dirt like what I'm doing here. All the tools that I use in this video I'll leave it in the description down below. Now we'll continue with the tamper tool. Pretty much just tamper and flatten that ground out so that it'll be easier for us for the paver base and right now we're going to be laying down this weed mat. I would suggest you use this weed mat because you don't want weeds growing out of your rocks because that's going to take a lot of time for cleanup. Save yourself in the future use the weed mat. I'm using this edger so that we can have a nice clean edge but again one of the problems with this is it's when you buy it it's rolled up and it's very hard to straighten out sometimes. Using this huge nail just so that I can have an initial hole because this ground is very tough and it has a lot of rocks. Using just the metal pegs first will bend it so just make it the initial hole and then peg this edger down. Continue on with the whole line as you can see right here and then just with the excess weed mat you can cut it or you can fold it's totally up to you. In this case I'm just cutting out the excess and there you have it there's your edger. Again we'll straighten this out later on when we start placing the rock. Now we're gonna lay down the paver base. I got these in bags on home depot. You can actually get these in truckloads but I just chose to buy the bags because it's not a big area so buying about eight bags of this will pretty much be sufficient for my project but it's totally up to you. If you buy it in bulk you'll probably save a lot more. Once you dump it down you're just pretty much spread it evenly all throughout. Again I'm using about eight bags to cover out this whole surface area. Now you're going to be laying it down nice and even all throughout. Make sure that you lay it down. Again my target here is four inches deep so if I can cover about one inch deep on these paver base it'll be perfect. I'm using my bowl rake to just pretty much even out and easily just pretty much transfer and lay down this evenly all throughout my surface area. Flip down your flip over your bowl rake to make it a lot easier on spreading it. Now as you can see it is about three inches. Once we temper this it's pretty much not going to be as much. It's not going to lower any more as much as you think but our target goal here is four inches to the surface to be even with the paver and the grass. So now I'm just using my tamper tool just to pack this down. Again if you have a bigger surface area I would suggest you rent out a plate compactor. You can rent those out at Home Depot or Lowe's. Rent them out for a day but in this case it's just a small area. I'm just going to use my tamper tool, use some elbow grease and just take patience and time and yeah it's pretty fun. This is one of the parts that I really like. If you look at the left it's what's compacted and the right is uncompacted and yeah we'll just continue on tampering this down. And then the next step we're going to do is put on and lay over paver sand. Paver sand is pretty much what's going to even out every highs and lows that we have. I actually bought less paver sand bags than what I do with paver base. What we're doing here we're just going to lay it down evenly across. Now I don't have a screed at the moment so I'm just making one out of two by four. Now what I mean by screeding is pretty much we're just going to lay down these two pvc pipes. Whatever pipes that you have whether it be galvanized or just pvc it doesn't matter and we're just going to screed it like this. What you see so that we can even out all the sand and pretty much shift it evenly all throughout the area. Now once you take out the pvc piping you're going to have some markings so just take your tamper tool and just tamp it down and it should even out. Now here we go now I'm just laying down all my pavers. I'm laying it down before I actually put it over. I measured out the distances so that everything is nice and even. Here it's four inches from the edge and I'm marking five and five-eighths between each paver. Now this is a good way to start everything before you actually do the initial install so that all your pavers will be nice and even and evenly spaced. Now that we have that measured out I'm putting in this down the very first paver down and we're gonna pretty much level it out make sure that it's nice and leveled. Use your leveler if it's not leveled you can pretty much just shake it like what you saw there. It probably would have been easier if I just put a string line right across instead of measuring each one from the distance from the deck to each paver but it's totally up to you whichever works for your liking. In this case I also worked from paver to paver you can also pretty much put sand first all throughout screed it but I don't have enough long enough PVC piping so I just do it one paver at a time. Whichever floats your boat whatever is easier for you as long as you get to the end result that's what matters and it's nice and even. Again make sure that you check for level you can use a rubber mallet but in case in this case I don't have a rubber mallet so I just use a 2x4 and my hammer. The rest of the video is pretty much the repeat process I'm just going to do a quick time lapse for you friends and again if you have an uneven paver just lift it up throw some a little bit of sand in there and then shake it out or use a real rubber mallet to even it out and then use your level once again and that should straighten out your pavers. Finally you have all the pavers nice and leveled again I'm not going to do the full perimeter of this deck yet I'm just showing you the front as of now so don't mind the edges but I will get to that later. Now it's time to lay down these pond pebbles this was the choice for my parents they wanted this for their for their stones I preferred the white pebbles but they wanted this color instead so this is the easy part all you're going to do is you're going to dump these pebbles in and then pretty much even it out all throughout the gaps and spaces. This took me about six bags so once again friends thank you so much for tuning in if you found this video helpful please hit that big like button please subscribe and press that notification bell so you can always be in tuned on DIYs how-to videos and product reviews that I do within this video hope you find this video helpful and again friends I'll see you on the next video have a good day