Stone Patio Haven By Catherine James At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Having struggled with house and garden maintenance for more years than I care to admit to, I’ve come to a point, as far as my garden is concerned, of stone patio haven. Excuse the pun, but it has really become my little sanctuary, and not longer that tatty, dirty place, cluttered with broken patio furniture.

How have I turned things around you ask? Well, just a little bit of insider knowledge about how to clean patio stone, that’s all. I’m no longer looking at the dirty flags out of the corner of my eye whilst slurping my tenth cup of coffee, and suppressing my feelings of inadequacy.

Nope, now I’m sitting on the patio furniture surrounded by clean patio stone and thoroughly enjoying my coffee break, after all, I have earned it.

My patio stones are made from pattern imprinted concrete. The individual flags are 600 by 600mm and cover an area of 20ft by 30ft. Two flights of steps led down to it from the house. A flight of steps descend from it to the garden. They are an ugly pepper and salt grey, when dirty. My clean patio stones are a striking drove grey. Together with freshly repainted ‘magnolia’ flower bed walls, and the beds full of geraniums, I could easily be in Grease (weather permitting).

Ok, so how have I managed to create my stone patio haven? Well it took hours of hard slog, two years ago! Yes two years ago I just lost it with my domestic surroundings and decided to do something drastic. I decided that instead of getting stressed and defeated by the grime, I’d do some research. No more scrubbing for hours one summer to get clean patio stones, just to watch them gradually assimilate grim over the autumn – winter –spring. Or the other tried and tested tactic of telling myself, in vane, that I really didn’t mind the grimy, unkempt look, it added character! I learned about what it was I was dealing with, i.e. imprinted concrete stone patio paving. I brought a Patio “Clean and Seal” Kit, and went for it. And yes the whole process did require hours of hard scrubbing.

When it got too much for me I decided to have a cleaning the patio party, which made light work of the last two flights of steps. It made a change, keeping drinks and food off the patio and inside the house!

The following day, once the sun had done its’ work, and heads had recovered – sealing the patio stone was a real pleasure. There’s nothing like sealing in the evidence of all that hard work. I managed to seal the whole patio, including the 3 flights of steps in the time it took to listen to the omnibus edition of the Archers.

The whole process, not including mine and co opted friends labour cost me £60. I’ve worked out that the time I’ve saved in work hours (not to mention, coffee breaks) gained since cleaning the flagstones’ on my patio must a up to hundreds of man/women hours.

This coffee tastes good!

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