Laying a Pavestone Patio – Part 3: Removing Tree Stumps

I know I posted a while ago that we were just about done with the pavestone patio… but 6 months later I mean it for real!

Originally we paved around the tree stumps and were going to make planters out of them, but after a while realized that the pretty much killed the space we had to work with. So the tree stumps had to come out. I did it the old fashioned way, with an axe & mattock. Had to dig down deep enough to get to the tap root, then about an hour of chopping and they came right out (i’m making it sound easier than it is)

I averaged about one tree stump per weekend, so this took most of my time (there were 6 stumps to remove). Also, after the rainy season, i’d discovered that my initial pavestone laying job wasn’t so even. There were little dips in the patio where water would collect in big puddles. So I used the tree stumps as an excuse to pull up the rest of the pavestones and re-level them.

This time I did it the right way by using a Vibra-Plate rented from Home Depot. It’s basically a machine with a vibrating plate on the bottom that flattens & compacts the bricks into the sand below it.

Here’s the final outcome