Outdoor paving is useful
for a number of reasons. You may want to create
a dry walking area, or give the
entranceway a new look. There are a lot of
off-the-shelf pavers available, but in some cases, it can be
better to make your own paving because, for a similar
amount of effort and cost, you can customize them to
fit the exact area you need. So I'm going to show you how
to make some exposed aggregate pavers yourself. So what I've got are
some horrible old stones. So what I'm going to do
is dig all these out, and I'm going to make my
pavers in between these areas. So what I'm thinking, I'm going
to have two pavers sitting here, two pavers sitting here. And what I think I'll do is lay
a continuation of these steps, a strip, one there. And now, almost like keeping the
same line as these pavers going across here, another two. Exactly the same
dimensions of these. And then I'll just lay
a garden across here. Now, that's going to
give us protection on the deck from the neighbors,
give us a little bit of privacy also. Now, in between
these pavers, I think I'll put some nice, new,
white stones around it. And that'll I'll out
amongst the black pavers. First step, draw up a plan
with all the dimensions. By 14.45. I'm going to make my pavers
75 millimeters thick. And also, underneath
that, I'm going to have 25-mill mill of fines
to give a nice, firm base. So effectively, what I need
to do is dig down 100 mill. To recap, I'm digging
down 100 millimeters. This will allow for 25
millimeters of fines as a base, and 75 millimeters
for the paver. Now, in this
particular situation, all my borders are already
defined by this boxing. So if you're at home and you
want to do a strip of pavers down the middle of your lawn,
what you might want to do is run a couple of
string lines so you know the exact area that
you're going to be digging out. Now, I was pretty lucky
in this situation here. Underneath my old
stones were some fines. So I'm going to get the
compactor in here, compact that down. So that's around about
25 mill of fines. Now, obviously, at home,
if you just strike dirt, you're still going to
have to fill that up with about 25 mill of
fines, and still compact it. Now I've compacted that down. It's all looking pretty good. And I've started
laying in our boxing in between where our
pavers are going to go. Now, a good little
rule of thumb you want to think about when
you're laying your pavers. You want to be no more
than about 500 millimeters from the center to the
center of your pavers. If you put them too far
apart, you'll be striding. If you put them
too close, you're going to do a whole
lot of little shuffles. So what I've got here, a
couple of bits of 3 by 3. I've nailed them together. And that's going to give me
my exact width that I want, 90 mill. Now, a good little tip for you. I've just put a little chamfer
on the edge of that boxing. And that's just going
to help me pop it out. You could also put some, like,
old engine oil or something like that on there. That'll help lubricate
it and pull it out. So I'm just going to
put my last one in. Now, there's a couple
of different ways you could attach this boxing. You could use nails. Come in through the outside
here, and just leave the nail sticking out
a slight bit so it's nice and easy to pull out. I'm just using some
square-drive 3-inch screws. And they'll come out
nice and easy, too. We're just about ready
for our concrete. The last thing we have
to do is cut our mesh. I've laid all my mesh. I've just got the
last place to cut. Now, there's a couple
of different ways you can cut this mesh. Either you use an angle
grinder, a hacksaw if you like, or you can just use these nice
and simple set of bolt cutters. Now, a wee little tip. When you are cutting
your mesh, you just want to make sure that you're
about 40 to 50 millimeters away from the edge of your boxing. Once you've made sure all
your mesh fits the holes, remove it all before your
first pour of concrete. OK. I'm just about ready to
place in my concrete. Now, the type of concrete that
I'm using is just the stock standard dry mix,
ready-mixed in a bag. Now all I have to do,
tip that into a barrow or concrete mixer,
and just add water. What I'm going to do is
actually add some black oxide. That's going to give it a
really nice dark color, sort of a charcoal color. Now, a wee little tip. What I'm going to do is add
half the stock standard concrete into our pavers. I'll put my mesh
in, and then I'm going to top it up with
our colored concrete. Two reasons for that. One, I'm going to save
money on the black oxide. And two, I'm going to get
more color consistency over more steps with
one mix in the barrow. Now I'm just going to
use a vibrator just to make sure this concrete gets
all the air bubbles out of it. I'm going to give it a
really nice solid mix. It's not imperative. You could tap the
sides with a hammer to get those air bubbles out. But this is a really
good way to make sure we get a nice, solid pour. [MACHINE WHIRRING] Cool. So I'm just going
to add in that mesh. And then we'll
top it up a little bit later with a good
mix of our black oxide. I've mixed up some more
concrete and finished off the rest of the pavers. Now for the black oxide. You just add it into
your concrete to color. Follow the instructions on the
packet, pour it over your mesh, and concrete away as per normal. OK. I'm just using an
old bit of timber to scree this off roughly level. And then I'm just
going to finish it off with my magnesium trowel. I'm not going to
use a steel float trowel to finish this off. It's going to bring up too
much water at this stage. So all we need to
do is use our timber and our magnesium trowel. Now, when you're using
the edging trowel, it's quite of a fine line
when you do put it in. You don't want to
put it in too late. Otherwise, coin
concrete's already set. And you don't want to put it
in early when it's too wet. So it's kind of a little bit-- probably about 20 minutes
after you place the concrete, throw it in there. Now, we don't need to
get too fussy on it because we are going to
be spraying this later and exposing the concrete. So all we need to do is
a nice little radius. Righty-o. Well, concrete's in. I've troweled it off. Now, what I'm
going to do next is I'm going to spray some
Rugasol on the top. Now, Rugasol eats away at about
the top five to six millimeters on the surface. Now, that just eats
away at all that slurry, and it gives a really
nice, exposed stone look. So what I'm going to do
is just a wee little test first with my finger to see
if the concrete's dry enough for me to spray it on. So we just want to make
sure that it's tacky so it only just comes off
on the tip of our finger. Yep, that's looking really good. So what I'm going to do
is use a spray bottle. And we'll give a
really fine mist spray. We don't want to
put truckloads on. Otherwise, it's going to eat
too deep into the surface. All we're looking for is to give
it a really fine mist spray. And then we're going to let
it wait for about 24 hours. Next day, I'm going to
come and hose it off. Righty-o. Now I'm just going to do exactly
the same to all the rest. And when you're finished,
make sure you rinse out your sprayer. Now it's been 24 hours. I'm just about to
remove the top surface to expose the aggregate. Now, to do that, I'm going
to use a water blaster. I've got that set right
on minimum setting. So I'm not going
to hit it too hard. Now, you can use a
garden hose, if you like. You just want to take your time. Now, a couple of tips. Now, if you are working
near any drains, you might want to put
a silage or a hay bale in that gutter to
capture this top slurry. You certainly don't
want any of this to hit anywhere
near any waterways. And I've got this
on a fan setting, so we're just going to go
really nice and lightly. Next step is
removing our boxing. Now, we really just want to
take care our time doing this. I'm going to pop the
screws out, and I'm going to give our boxing a
wee little tap with a hammer just to loosen it
from the concrete. OK. Now I'm just going to repeat
the same process for the rest. Now you're ready to add
your finishing touches. I've decided on some
black stain for my borders and some white pebbles in
the gaps between my pavers. Check it out. There's our exposed
aggregate pavers. As you can see, they look
great, and have helped finish off this area nicely. Plus, no more muddy socks when
you're going to get the mail.
