Making a paver walkway from concrete and a mold | How to

what's up everybody so today we're gonna be putting a little bit of a concrete uh paver pad sort of thing right here in front of the shed it's not gonna be too big i just wanna go basically from side to side and out a couple feet in front of the shed here and we're gonna do it a little bit differently it's not gonna be a solid pad but i don't want to have to go through all the steps of laying pavers either so what i'm going to do is i actually got these molds online that you can buy you can get these in a whole bunch of different patterns isolate and they're filled with concrete so we're gonna give these guys a try i've never used them before but these are really heavy-duty so let's see how they go all right now as you can see there are a bunch of different styles and designs of these molds that you can get with different patterns and everything going on i'll have a link to them down below some of them also have it so the mold will still line up if you actually rotate them with each other and you can actually make a different kind of design and pattern as you're running along some don't so you have to play around with it and see what you got but there's not much prep that has to be done with these things unlike a paper patio whereas this we basically just got to get the organic stuff out of the way so it's fall here i had to leaf blow some leaves out of the way but if you're making a pathway in amongst your grass you just have to dig the top layer of grass out and down a couple inches and then just lay a p rock base and rake it out to be as level and as flat as you need all right now concrete this is the biggest place i've seen a lot of people make mistakes after reading reviews and doing some research online a lot of people are saying that the molds are terrible because they pick it up and the concrete just flows out it's not the mold that's the problem it's the concrete mix they used now you can get just the cheapo yellow bag stuff that works perfectly fine for a lot of slabs but not for these because we're in a mold we're picking it up and reusing it that stuff sets in 24 to 48 hours which in order to pick the mold up you're probably gonna be waiting about five hours before you can even pick it up which is entirely too long on the opposite end of the spectrum you have something like this stuff right here in the red bag which is a fast setting concrete and that stuff sets up in 20 to 30 minutes hard that means that once you've actually mixed it in the tub you've probably only got about two to five minutes of working time which is obviously way too fast because you're never going to get into the mold so we need some slots right happy medium between those two and that's what this stuff is right here this pro finish quikrete 6000 is a high strength high early concrete high early means this stuff sets up walk on hard in 10 hours so it's a lot slower than the 30 minutes this stuff is but a lot faster than the 24 to 48 hours the other stuff is within literally 10 to 15 minutes we can lift our molds off and this concrete is going to hold its shape to mix our concrete i've got one of these large mixing tubs here you can usually find these in the same aisle as the concrete at your local hardware center but there's a small one and a large one the large one that i've got here you can usually mix two bags of concrete at a time using a garden hoe add your water incrementally so you don't add too much at a time and then we're going for a very thick oatmeal type consistency with this stuff once you've got the concrete mixed we can go ahead and start placing our molds where we need them and before we pour our concrete into them make sure to go ahead and actually soak the rocks and the mold this will actually help the concrete uh not stick to the mold but stick to the rocks below it and actually kind of create a nice solid surface for yourself then it's just a matter of scooping and adding your concrete into the molds a couple of things i figured out as we went here when you're adding your concrete into the mold you're gonna definitely want to just sort of take your big scoops and well for lack of a better turn plop it down in there and then just take the trowel itself and just sort of poke and prod it around now this will help actually push it out into the corners and make sure it's actually filling up all the voids and helps pop any air bubbles that you might have in there as well also you're going to want to make sure that you overfill the mold ever so slightly not too much just ever so slightly overfill it that way when you come back and actually trowel it you can push down with the trowel flush with the top of the molds and that will really help make sure that everything is level and flush with the mold and push down inside of it now in terms of dry time and amount of concrete used i had two molds going we actually found that by the time i filled and smoothed one and filled and smoothed the second one the first one was actually dry enough that we could come back and pick the mold up already and continue on make sure when you pick it up however just go in a nice smooth straight vertical fashion don't twist it don't wiggle it don't push it at a weird angle because the concrete is still pretty soft and you can ruin your work the concrete's still soft here it may be firm enough to hold its shape but it's still really soft yet so don't get too aggro on it i also made sure to just keep our tools clean every couple of stones so the concrete didn't start to dry on them and ruin them but in terms of concrete it took us two 55 pound bags to fill three of these molds almost exactly so we only had four 55 pound bags to do all six of these stones by the time we mixed our next batch of concrete the last stone we poured was already dry yeah that looked good then we just kept leapfrogging ourselves to the end fill the mold pick up the last one we filled move it over fill it and pick up the last one move phil pick move phil pick move phil there was virtually no down time on this which was awesome the timing was perfect and if you do have any leftover concrete at the end of this literally just pour it out on some rocks it's not going to stick to the rocks then just make it into a big pile pat it tight and you can just grab it the next day and toss it out when it's dry now i wish i could say this whole process went smoothly without a hitch we had no problems there was one issue difficult stone and it was the last one i actually thought it was gonna be the first one to be honest with you i figured if there's gonna be a problem it's gonna be the first stone but no it was the last one so you can see here it was difficult letting go it was holding on we just kept poking and prodding ever so slightly until it decided to finally let go and we smoothed it out and to be honest you're never gonna know anyway but looking back now i kind of figured out what happened we were rinsing our tools off but we weren't rinsing the molds out in between and cleaning them so there was a little bit of sandy residue texture from the last few stones still left on the inside of the mold and that had started to cure and the new concrete was sticking to it kind of like a sandpaper so we went to pick it up it was holding on so make sure to clean your molds in between as well now the next day we hydrated the stones just to help with the curing process and you're going to want to make sure to use a light coat of water at this point because you can still actually do a little bit of damage to them they're still fairly soft just firm flooding them would have honestly been the best idea with no end on the hose just running water over them but oh well i also spread some sand in between these stones just to help hold them in place if you're making a walkway throughout your yard you may just be using topsoil if you've made a patio or something like that you may want to use polymeric sand that stuff kind of hardens like a grout when you get it wet and acts as a cement to hold everything together and stop it from moving around so go ahead and add your filler of choice all right here we are now it's been a couple days since we first poured them don't mind the speckles and stuff it's kind of starting to rain right now but they've lightened up considerably now that they started to dry now would i have done anything different yeah as you can see our gap between the stones is a little bit large now our problem was when we first laid them our gap was big on here and in order to keep it consistent we just kept that gap going all the way across is it a deal breaker no am i still happy with it absolutely but if you wanted more of a running pattern of the stones tighten up your gaps and it would have a really really cool look where it would just more look more like a pattern but this method kind of looks like a stepping stone walkway so both versions have their purpose now don't mind the way it kind of looks right now with the sand and the elevations and stuff like that i've been purposely holding off bringing in topsoil and getting this to grass because i knew i was going to be doing something like this anyway and i might pour one more row in front of the shed but i'm out of nice weather for this year so i have to wait till next year when i do it however i'm going to sweep out and wash out some of the sand bring in some topsoil and then i'm going to have all this back to grass in through here and around leading up to them and then i'm not sure yet i might still bring them up and actually plant grass in between them and then just sort of weed whack and mow the grass flush with the stones and you could also do something like this in the middle of the yard and it would give you a nice sort of walking path design if you recess the stones down flush like that into the grass so well everybody that's it so we tried something new and it pretty much mostly worked out so i mean what's the worst that could happen you learn something and you have fun they're actually really cool to use so if you guys have been thinking about something like this give them a try you might actually enjoy the results so i'll have a link to the ones i use down below but otherwise thanks for watching you guys will see in the next one

Channel: Jesse does DIY

Views: 506,593

Keywords: diy, how to, beginner, instruction, rustic, tutorial, walkmaker, walk maker, walk, maker, concrete, cement, paver, patio, stone, slab

Id: erAA7uR6IRA

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 03 2021