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!