Have a look at the rough drawing and check back in to see how the project progresses.
The customer has given a rough drawing of what she wants.
Porcelain patio at the top and bottom of the garden
A stepping stone path with gravel in between connecting the two on the right side of garden
A flower bed mirroring the width of the path on the left side
A pergola on the rear patio
A circular lawn in the centre
The edging for the circular lawn will be done using a darker porcelain to contrast the patio tiles, We will be cutting the curves in the tiles (example photo shown using white tiles on another project). She is also debating whether to have this curve creep into both patios slightly.
We will be starting this project towards the end of February and will take 10 days complete.
I recommend porcelain to almost everyone. In my mind, you should only choose sandstone if it suits the look you want to achieve with your garden. As for practical purposes porcelain is far superior.
Porcelain pros:
Non-slip
easy to clean
does not weather
won't crack (when Installed correctly)
a lot more precise meaning no uneven joints. There are exceptions to the precision of porcelain but it is rare. recently, we had one tile that was badly out of square. I'd estimate this to be 1 in 1000
A huge variety of colours. even sandstone effect porcelain.
Porcelain Cons:
Like. to chip, especially around the perimeter of the patio.
Sandstone Pros:
A more natural look and feel
Can be sealed to make cleaning easier and increase resistance to weathering
imperfections in the slabs which adds to look depending on the type of person you are (in the con list for the same reason)
Sandstone Cons:
needs to be sealed yearly to avoid weathering and staining
potential to crack with a quick freeze due to its porosity
imperfections in the slabs
A porcelain patio job we completed in Jan 2024. It had been 'Installed' 18 Months prior by another company.
Problems with their laying:
- Pooling
- No primer
- Inconsistent joint widths
- Cut tiles were badly chipped
- Little cement in the mix
- Broken tiles due to voids in bed
One challenge on this project was that the customer had evened out the joint widths with an angle grinder. This made it look much better short term but created a potentially big problem when relaying it as it put the tiles out of square. Luckily, because we had a few spare tiles we were able to swap some of them and the rest were used at the end of the patio and we cut 1cm off all of the end tiles.
We also had the re-fit the artificial grass. We used concrete around the perimeter of the grass and glued the grass to the concrete as opposed to the previous method of nailing into sand.
One reason I think dodgy tradesman stay in business is because its so easy to make a photo look good for example the first two photos are before and after photos and its tough to make out the difference other than a jet-wash.
We need your consent to load the translations
We use a third-party service to translate the website content that may collect data about your activity. Please review the details in the privacy policy and accept the service to view the translations.