Case study
Dark porcelain patio with matching brick steps in Addlestone
- Location
- Addlestone, Surrey (KT15)
- Timescale
- Under two weeks
- Services used
- Porcelain paving, dark brick steps, picture frame edging, gravel trap drainage
- Approximate value
- Available on request
The brief
Slabs that had had their day
The back of this Addlestone bungalow was covered in old concrete slabs. They were stained, cracked through in places and breaking up where they met the lawn, with loose pieces sitting in the grass.
The two steps up to the back doors did not match. One was old red brick with a worn coping, the other a pair of concrete slabs set on top of each other.
The owners wanted the lot lifted and replaced with one clean, dark surface that would sit with the black window frames and the dark plinth along the bottom of the house.
Before and after
The same garden, under two weeks apart
The build
Porcelain laid to stay put
The old patio was broken out and taken away, and the ground dug down to make room for a compacted MOT sub-base over a woven membrane. Close to 50 sqm of dark grey porcelain then went down on a full sand and cement bed, with a bonding primer on the back of every slab. Porcelain does not grip mortar the way natural stone does, and the primer is what stops it working loose later.
Everything around the paving was built from a single dark brick chosen to match it. It picture frames the patio along the lawn and forms the two new steps up to the doors. The brickwork was pointed in black dyed mortar, so the joints read as part of the brick instead of grey lines through it.
Along the house wall, a gravel trap of matching stone chippings takes water off the patio and away from the brickwork.
The result
One surface from the doors to the lawn
The patio now runs as a single dark surface from the back doors out to the grass, with the brick frame giving it a crisp, straight edge. Both steps are new, square and matched, the grout is coloured to suit the paving, and water has somewhere to go along the house instead of sitting against it.
Services used on this project
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