I'm a first time home owner, with very little experience in landscaping and I am wanting to take on my first project and build myself a patio. My home has a 11.5x13.5 area on the side of my deck that has been filled in with pea gravel and has a liner underneath that is useless. I can spray the entire area with Roundup and a week later, grass continues to grow.

I have been thinking about building a patio in the area to fix that problem, because I think it will look great on the side of my house. Here is my question, various people have told me I can leave the pea gravel and use it as a base and pound as much as I can into the ground and use some kind of paver sand (I believe that's what the folks at Home Depot called it) on top and level it out and place the stone on top of that.

My question being does this sound like a idea? What all am I going to need? I have called landscaping folks in the area and they would charge nearly $1500 to come do it, when I can purchase the stone for $350~, sand, and whatever materials I need and do it myself.

Any and all advice is welcome!

 

while your method might work short term, long term I don't believe it will last.
I've never done a patio, so I can't speak from experience but everything that I've seen and read indicates at least a 4 to 6 inch base of crushed stone that needs to be compacted, followed by an an inch and half or so of sand to lay the pavers on top.

Perhaps if you have 4 inches or more of pea gravel already in place it could work, but ... the crushed stone when compacted makes for a very solid base to work up from.

One more thing do you have any height issues to worry about, after grave, sand and pavers, is everything going to line up, height wise, the way you expect?

I'll stop and let the experts chime in now ...

 

Nope, won't work

You need a compacted base and pea gravel won't compact

Sorry

BTW, welcome to the forums

 

Alright so my next question would be what would you propose I should do? Like I said the area is 11.5x13.5 feet. It's full of pea gravel, and I'm constantly having to weed the darn thing. I would really like a patio set in the area because my deck just isn't big enough for one.

 

Cement or pavers would be my thought, you're just going to have to get rid of the gravel and put down a proper base first.

Not fun work but pretty straight forward