It all started when we visited a granite countertop place to get a quote on replacing ours and found out that they THROW AWAY the granite scraps. Worse than that, they have to pay by the pound to have someone take them away! Hmm…

With nothing but our Nissan Versa, my trusty wheelbarrow, and permission from the granite place to “take as much as I wanted”, I got to work hauling these scrap granite pieces to our house.

I decided to lay them out in a pattern first, then go back afterwards and start mortaring them down.

One thing I should have thought about beforehand but didn’t… these pieces of rock are almost an inch think. They are HEAVY.

After lots and lots (and lots) of trips, the patio started to take shape. This was over the course of about 10 months of randomly stopping by the dumpster.

Lots of work.

Lots and lots of work. (Bonus – Liberty catching some sun)

It’s amazing the kindof stuff these places throw away. A fully intact granite countertop was in the dumpster, and we took it to my sisters house for use in a future project of hers. The next day, there were 4 more. These things are usually several hundred dollars.

Picked up some mortar from Floor and Decor to get started with sticking them to the patio.

Also picked up some sanded grout. Lot’s of it. Like, 24 bags at 25lbs each… 600 freaking lbs of grout.

We settled on “slate” for a color because I thought it would best match our house and help the individual granite pieces stand out.

My dad vacuumed out under almost every piece of granite while I went behind him and mortared them down.

We attached tape to each piece after it was mortared so we knew where we were.

Once everything was mortared down, it was time to fill in those huge grout lines. This involved approximately 1 trillion gallons of water for wiping.

And for mixing.

At first, we would mix the grout and get a float and try to grout it like regular tile. This took way, way, way too long. So, after the first few bags, we came up with a new plan. First, we would mix the grout in a bucket. Then, we would plop a huge glop of it right on the granite.

Then, we would use a floor squeegee and spread it out, filling the cracks between the pieces.

Much faster.

Easy peazy.

Then, the wiping would begin. Oh, the wiping. The awful, awful wiping. Days and days of wiping.

Did I mention how much I loathe wiping?

Luckily, my dad and I weren’t alone in this. Finley kept us company and did a great job supervising the work in-between episodes of “Octonauts”.

I think all that hard work paid off though. We now have an amazing granite flagged patio. Many of these pieces of granite are north of $150/sqft, and we got them all for FREE.

The large grout lines and the unevenness of some of the granite make the traction problem non existent (something I was worried about before we got started).

Thanks for checking out my latest project!