DIY Gravel Patio for Unlevel Ground

If you have big dreams for your backyard, but also have an unlevel backyard, this post is for you. When we were looking for land, we were focused on getting as much flat land as possible. The thing is, that doesn't mean that the land is also level. In our backyard area we want to be able to have a fire pit area with seating and also a place to put a dining table. This means we need a space that is pretty level, but we also don't have the budget for something like a concrete slab. This project is our solution!

All products and materials used in the project:

- Landscape Fabric

- Landscape Timbers

- 1/2" Gravel

- 1/2" Rebar

- 1/2" Drillbit

- Short Shovel

- Hard Rake

This is what the space looked like before. As you can see, the land goes down a lot on the left side so we can't just plop a table or chairs down.

We had someone come to level a spot in another place on our land and asked them to level a space for our gravel patio. Unfortunately, they did way more than we asked and sort of flattened out the whole backyard. This caused us to have to deal with way more of the yard than we really wanted to or planned on at the time.

We used landscape timbers to frame out the space. Our patio is 16' x 20' and landscape timbers come 8 ft. long. We ended up using 13 landscape timbers.

We started at the highest corner of the rectangle and worked our way around. We made sure the first landscape timber was super level first, of course, and then leveled each landscape timber along the way.

Our patio ended up being one landscape timber high on one side and three high on the other. The part that connects them is where the angle is so one side has only one landscape timber and the other is three leading down to the other side. We secured the timbers to each other with 4" screws and then we secured each one to the ground by drilling 1/2" holes all the way through and then hammering in a piece of rebar through the timbers and into the ground.

On the side where there are three timbers, we cut the rebar to 20" so that half of it made it into the ground. The rebar that went into just one timber was 10" long.

A note on rebar: Cutting rebar is not easy or fun and should be done with caution. I cut our rebar with a metal grinder as I have many times before with gloves on and glasses to protect my eyes. I had the rebar on my saw horses and when I made the first cut, the rebar popped up and burned my arm. I of course figured out a way to cut it more safely for the rest of the cuts... but if you can afford it, buy the rebar already cut. Or make sure you are comfortable with cutting metal and have your arms and legs covered. I wear overalls to protect my legs 99% of the time I'm doing outdoor projects, so I was good there. It's more expensive to buy rebar already cut, but it may be worth it to you. 

Check out all of our favorite working outside gear here!

Next we laid down the landscape fabric. We are using this because we don't want the gravel to sink into the ground. It will also keep the weeds away for a while, although over time the weeds will appear and we will have to deal with them then.

Then we started the tedious and laborious process of shoveling gravel onto the area. We were lucky in that we were able to back our trailer right up to the patio area. This meant we didn't have to shovel gravel into a wheel barrow and then transfer the gravel across a long space to then dump it. We found using a short shovel inside the trailer made the work so much easier and we used a hard rake to spread the gravel.

After two trips and having shoveled 3.5 cubic yards of gravel onto the patio, we knew we still needed more and we needed an amount that our trailer couldn't handle.

So we ended up renting a dump trailer. This made getting the gravel onto the patio so much easier and we were able to use the trailer to get more materials (like soil) for other projects. We ended up using 7.5 cubic yards of 1/2" gravel which was way more than we thought we needed.

We also built steps on the high side of the patio so we could safely walk down to the ground and/or other patio area. Should I do a DIY on an easy stair build? I've built a version of these steps in many places on our land because they are so easy.

And after all that, we finally completed the patio which honestly now seems like it has always been there. It's a blank slate that I'm not sure we will get to do anything with this season. We weren't actually planning on doing this project this season because we just didn't have the budget or time for it. But with all the mud that was created in the bad leveling job it was something we had to do for our sanity and so it moved to the top of the list.

If you've been following along on our journey for a while, you've probably noticed we haven't updated you on our blog in a long time. We moved off grid and onto land we bought almost 3 years ago now and finding the balance between establishing our land and home and our 3 blogs has been a rollercoaster. We are finally starting to have to to breathe and be able to use our time for blogging again, so check back for more home DIYS in the future. If you are interested in our off grid homesteading posts, check out out other blog- The Off Grid Homesteader, and of course we can't leave out our stock tank pool business- Stock Tank Pool Authority. See you in one of those places soon! 

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DIY Copper Hanging Rack for LESS

We are getting back to our roots and are going to start updating this blog which has been the core of our online success. Since our last post, a lot has changed in our lives. 

Today we are bringing you such an easy and inexpensive DIY and I'm honestly not sure why this isn't more common. We have been finishing our tiny home and we have been working with a limited budget. However we haven't wanted to sacrifice a beautiful aesthetic, which has lead us to DIYing just about everything.

This blog has documented several of DIYs and it's funny to see how much our styles have changed over the years. I remember a time when neon decor was cool and we painted a coffee table in many shades of neon colors. When I see pictures of it now, I think it looks horrible but we loved it at the time. We have always loved color but we are using it more sparingly in our new home. Our previous home was boho, eclectic, colorful, and had a lot of bold statements. All of that totally fit our style, location, and home at the time. But now we are in a tiny home in a very rural setting and having black and white geometric wallpaper with banana leaf covered dining chairs just doesn't seem to the right vibe. 

Our new design vibe is French country, English cottage, cozy, and more neutral with a little color here and there. The house is not done yet and we only have bare drywall in our living room but our kitchen is turning out to be lovely if I do say so myself. When looking for inspiration for our kitchen, a lot of the kitchens I loved had a gold or copper hanging rack. The ones you can buy are outrageously expensive but luckily for you and me, we have an inexpensive and easy DIY to get the same look. 

Materials for this project:

- 1/2'' Copper pipe 

- Copper elbows

- Copper bell hangers

- Copper S hooks Option 1

- Copper S hooks Option 2

- Copper End Cap

- Copper Pipe Cutter

- Drill

- Copper Bonding "glue" (optional)

Step 1. Figure out how long you want your copper rack and cut your copper pipe to that length. You can use this tool to cut the copper pipe. The reader's digest version of how to use it is to tighten the cutter around the pipe (with the pipe sitting perfectly in between the two rollers) and roll it around the pipe. You may have to tighten the cutter as you go and depending on what size cutter you purchased, it could take up to 20 turns.

Step 2. Find the studs in your wall. Make a note of where they are and then measure how high you want the bar to go. It's helpful to have an idea of what you want to hang on your rack so you know how high it needs to be. Mark this height on the studs. We did three bell hangers for a 6' span which adds up to about 32" between each bell hanger.

Step 3. Attach the bell hangers to the studs. We started out using the screws that came with the bell hangers but they would sometimes break. We ended up using some 2 1/2" wood screws we had laying around.

Step 4. Put the copper pipe into the bell hanger and screw the bell hangers closed.

Step 5. Add the caps to the end of the pipe so that you don't have sharp ends. We did not permanently attach the caps. If you want to do that, you can use a special bonding product to secure the caps to the pipe. 

Step 6. Add your hooks and hang up all your kitchen wares you want to put on display. Here are some of the things that we have added to ours: 

- Copper colander

- Hanging Baskets

- Scissors Option 1

- Scissors Option 2

- Mini Oven Mitts

- Enamelware Ladle

The addition of this rack makes our low budget kitchen look more expensive and elegant. We have enjoyed playing around with the things we hang on the rack. It's a great place to hang seasonal decor. It's really nice to have the things we use most often in such an easy to reach place. 

So if you aren't an expert DIYer, you don't have a lot of storage space, and you want to add some pizzazz without breaking the bank, this is the project for you! 

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DIY Seed Starting Shelf For Under $100

We are hoping to be able to have a garden this year but with all of the other massive off-grid projects we have going on, we aren’t sure how big of a garden we will have. However, last year on our urban homestead we started a massive garden and we grew 90% of it from seed. We came up with an inexpensive seed starting shelf system that worked really well for us.

I came up with something that you could order online and have delivered straight to your door, and it's only two products that add up to under $100.

For this project you will need:

- Shelf

- Lights

- Scrap wood pieces

- Yarn or String 

- Timer (not necessary, but convenient) 

If you want to get fancy and more hands off, you could purchase a timer like we did. I used scrap wood and yarn that I already had, so you can probably find something around the house to use instead of those things. Anything that is straight and rigid could be used. Think scrap metal, extra PVC pipe, wood, etc.

I found this shelf on Amazon and it seemed perfect for what I needed. I wanted to be able to put trays on the shelves, I needed some holes in the shelves to be able to attach the lights to, and I didn't want to spend a lot of money.

You also need to have a specific kind of light. I did a lot of research about what kind you need for your seedlings and found these lights that replicate the perfect amount of daylight.

If you are in a place where you really have to consider your electricity use (like most of us off-griders) these lights use 20W per light. That isn’t too bad when you are talking about 1 light, but having more lights will start to add up. You could certainly nix the lights and put the shelf near a window and rely on daylight itself. But if you have the power, this setup will use about 160W per hour it’s on. A good solution might be to use the daylight in the daytime and then use the lights when the sun goes down. It’s important for your seedlings to get about 14-16 hours of daylight, so the supplemental light would be really helpful.

Once you have your shelf and lights, all that's left to do is assemble your setup. First start by assembling the shelf, which is very simple and self explanatory.

Next, use the provided light clips and attach them to your materiel of choice. Because I used wood, I just screwed the clips onto the wood without pre-drilling. If you use another material you may have to pre-drill a hole.

I have 8 lights over 4 shelves, so I need 8 pieces of wood. Each wood gets 2 clips screwed on in the exact same place on each piece. This is so I can attach 2 lights.

Once the clips were attached, I clipped in the lights. Make sure the wood pieces are spaced out toward the edge rather than the middle. This part can be a little finicky as the clips can get stretched out when you screw them in. When this happened all i did was pinch the two side pieces together. Once you get started on this project, you will really understand what i mean.

The lights can all be connected together with the provided cords. There are instructions, but it’s pretty intuitive also. One light will have a cord with a plug on it and then the rest connect to each other with the interconnecting cords.

I tied four pieces of yarn on each set of lights- two on each end. Then I took the yarn and looped it through the shelf above and tied them as evenly as possible. I also only tied them with a bow (not a knot) so that i could untie them and lower or raise the lights as needed. When you start your seeds the lights will need to be really close to the soil. As the seedlings grow you will need to raise the lights higher so they don’t burn the tender leaves.

And that’s about it! You could really do this with any shelf you already have and just buy the lights. I know when I did some research for something similar to this that you didn’t have to DIY, it was pretty expensive for some lights and a shelf. The key is getting the correct lights that mimic daylight. Warm lighting will not work here! 

Let us know if you try this DIY and how it works out for you! Leave us any questions in the comments below. Thanks for reading!

 

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