Our RV resides in a cute little RV resort. It's older and not high end, but the people are friendly and we have what we need here. The one thing that is lacking is grass. There is some grass, but there is a lot of mud. And it seems like it has rained non-stop since we moved in. The resort gave us some asphalt gravel to give us a driveway instead of a mudway, but it was still muddy outside our door and the path to the car. In addition I wanted a place to sit outside that was above the mud. The rules at the resort state we can build a patio as long as it is low to the ground and not permanent. So we did just that, and it was low cost too...bonus!!
Now I fully understand that this post is common sense and not really needed, but I wanted to document it for myself...so if you get bored reading it I will never know ;)
Here is what we started with. Just some ground. We thought about leveling it first, but decided against that partly because we didn't feel like it and partly because we figured with the mud everything would kind of sink in and level itself. I actually forgot to take a before picture, but you get the idea of what we were working with.
First we obtained 6 pallets. That was the hardest part of the whole project and what held it up until now. Luckily I remembered that a friend had access to pallets and not only did she save me 6 of them, her husband brought them home with him so we didn't have to travel as far to get them. Otherwise I might have gone dumpster diving in search of pallets. Once we got the pallets home, the rest of the project just took a couple hours. Seriously...that Saturday we managed to go pick up the pallets and the supplies (2 hours+ round trip), start the project, take our daughter to a Girl Scout outing(hour round trip), continue working on the project, go pick her up from the outing(another hour round trip), go run a 5k race (about 4 hours of our time), come back and finish it all up before dropping into bed with exhaustion.
First we arranged the pallets into the size we wanted. For us it was a simple 2 x 3 design. This is what fit in the area and was perfect to fit under our awning. Then we put plywood, that we had gotten cut at Home Depot to size when we bought it, on top of the pallets. We had to use 3 pieces and we were going to make the patio into 3 separate pieces, but we decided it wouldn't be as stable. So we purposely cut the plywood to be wider than the pallets so it overlapped. Then we screwed down the plywood all the way around the edges and a few in the center. By the way...when I say we, I really mean my husband. I just stood around and looked helpful.
Next we painted it. (This is the part I actually did.) We got a quart of outdoor oops paint at Home Depot for $2.00. The color didn't matter to us because it was going to be covered. Ours was kind of a deep purple. We purposely bought the lowest end plywood and painted it to help it from warping. Since this isn't a permanent structure we figure the paint will help the cheap plywood from warping as fast. After we painted it I was halfway tempted to keep it like that and paint pretty designs on it, but I moved on. (And by moved on I mean, my husband said no to the deep purple with flower designs on it :)
Finally we bought outdoor carpet and screwed it down with washers. This ensures it won't blow away or slip. We had extra so we were able to wrap it around the edges to kind of give the patio a finished look. Well as finished as a temporary low cost patio can look.
Cost was about $40 for carpet, $22 for plywood, $2 for paint and $10 for screws and washers. For around $75 we had a patio that feels so much homier than just sitting outside in the mud. We picked up some chairs and a glider inexpensively and tada...we now have another space to hang out. I especially love it at night when the awning is out and lit up. It feels cozy and vacationy. (I know that isn't a word, but that is how it feels :) And now we can walk from the car to the house without stomping through mud. It's the little things.
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