Take your yard from drab to fabulous on a budget!

You don’t need a ton of money to turn your basic, boring yard into something to be proud of; with a few bucks and some work, you can get results like these! Our very own Josh A decided to see what he could do with his yard, and the results are pretty great – especially for his first time attempting a job like this.

This project was for the side of the house that connects the sliding door to the back yard. The area is 5.5′ wide by 33′ long. A total square footage of 181.5 feet.

Tools used:

A truck
A shovel
A wheelbarrow
Hand Tamper (or just use your feet)

Products purchased

Grey Stepping Stones 12″ (x32) | $39.36
1 cu.yd. 1/4″ Minus – Quarry Rock | $28
1 cu.yd. Douglas Nuggets | $34
2 rolls landscape fabric (6′ x 25′) | $29.50
Landscape fabric stakes (1 bundle) | $2
- Total Price: $132.86

Step 1

The side of the yard started out as a mess of very tall weeds, and the first step was clearing the area by pulling by hand and with a weed whacker to eliminate the mess in the way (don’t forget yo bring your yard waste to Lane Forest for recycling!)

This image to the left is right after clearing out the weeds and placing a couple 12″ stepping stones to show sizing.

Step 2

Lay down the landscape fabric, and secure it with the fabric stakes.

Bring in one cubic yard of 1/4″ minus quarry rock and lay it down over the area and flatten it out as best you can.

Using a hand tamper, or just your feet, stamp the rock down, removing air and hardening the walkway area.

Step 3

Lay and level the 12″ Stepping Stones on top of the 1/4″ minus. You can center them to the width by finding the center point of the walkway (in this case it was 2.75′) and running a line all the way down (using twine and 2 of the fabric staples).

For this setup, the tiles were places an inch apart from each other in a diamond pattern with 6.5″ of space between each diamond.

Step 4

Add the Douglas Nugget!

One cubic yard of Douglas Nugget was enough to cover this 149.5 sq ft area (181 sq ft of space minus the 32 sq ft of tiles) at 2 inches deep.

Then simply rake/brush/sweep the area to level it as best as possible and clear the tiles, while allowing the nuggets and fines to land between the tiles.