We turned our old outside loo into the most beautiful spot in our garden

Committed home renovators David and Andrew Harrison-Colley (better known on Instagram as The Home Boys) are part of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing their thoughts on making a home together and living through the tricky parts. See the rest of their articles here.

This whole renovation started with a demolition. Three and a half years ago – before the extension, before the terracotta floors, before any of the good bits – we took a sledgehammer to the old carpenter’s workshop at the side of the house. So it feels oddly fitting that the last big job in the garden began exactly the same way: with us knocking something down.

Because the sunny corner we’d earmarked for a patio had one small problem sitting right in the middle of it – the original outside toilet. A little brick outbuilding that had been clinging on for decades, doing nothing in particular except getting in the way of our plans. Before we could build the nice part, we had to lose the loo.

Demolition, part two

There’s something very satisfying about a demolition when you know exactly what’s going in its place. This wasn’t knocking down for the sake of it – it was clearing the way. Off came the roof, down came the walls, and within a day the corner had opened right up. Suddenly we could see the space for what it could be rather than what it had always been.

And true to form, we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to bin the lot. The bricks that were worth saving got the same treatment as all the others – cleaned up by hand, mortar chipped off, stacked back onto the pile. Some of them have gone straight down into the patio.

There’s a nice symmetry to that: the old outside loo is, in a very literal sense, now part of the floor we stand on with a glass of wine on a summer evening.

Building it back up

With the corner cleared, the patio itself came together faster than we expected – partly because we’d had plenty of practice with these bricks by now (see: the wall, the edging, the steps), and partly because the weather held for once.

We started with the bit no one photographs: the base. A layer of MOT hardcore, raked out and compacted down hard until it stopped moving underfoot. This is the unglamorous foundation that stops a patio sinking or lifting later, and it is absolutely not the place to cut corners.

On top of that, we bedded the bricks on a sand and cement mortar – the same mix we used for the flush lawn edging. A patio has to take furniture, footfall and – eventually – the full weight of a barbecue and a crowd, so it needs locking down properly.

A pattern that ties it all together

Here’s the detail we’re quietly most pleased with. We laid the patio in a basketweave – pairs of bricks turned alternately, so the eye reads a woven grid rather than straight runs.

We chose it to match the treads of the new brick-and-sleeper steps, so the two flow into one another. But the pattern goes back further than that: it’s lifted straight from the brick floor in the snug, inside the cottage.

That’s become one of our favourite things about this stage of the renovation – letting the inside and the outside speak to each other. The same reclaimed bricks, the same basketweave, echoing between a room we’ll retreat to over winter and a patio we’ll sit out on all summer.

It makes the garden feel like part of the house rather than a separate project bolted on at the end. A home that feels collected and connected rather than compartmentalised has been the goal indoors from the very beginning – it turns out exactly the same thinking works outside.

Designing around the time of day

If there’s one thing we’d urge anyone planning a patio to think about, it’s not the size or the shape – it’s the light. Specifically, when you’ll actually be out there.

We positioned this one to catch the evening sun, because we know how we live: the garden gets used most at the end of the day, once the work is done and dinner’s being thrown on the barbecue.

A patio that bakes at midday and falls into shade by six would have looked lovely in photos and gone completely unused in real life. The way sun and shade move across a garden is easy to overlook on a plan and impossible to ignore once you’re living with it.

If you’re laying a reclaimed brick patio

• Compact the base properly. MOT hardcore, well compacted, is what stops the whole thing sinking or heaving. Boring, essential, non-negotiable.
• Mortar, not sand, for a patio. A sand and cement bed gives a firmer, longer-lasting fix than sharp sand.
• Dry-lay your pattern first. Basketweave – or whatever you choose – is far easier to plan on the ground before anything’s fixed than to unpick halfway through.
• Build in a slight fall. Set a gentle slope away from the house so rainwater runs off rather than pooling or draining back towards the walls.
• Steal a detail from indoors. Matching a pattern, tone or material to something inside is the quickest way to make a garden feel considered rather than added on.

Not quite finished (of course)

We’d love to tell you the patio is done and dusted, but if you’ve read any of our previous columns you’ll know we don’t really do “finished”. The bricks are down, the space is usable, and we’ve already eaten out there more times than we can count.

But there’s a next chapter already forming: a pergola over the top to give it some height and shade, and a built-in bench and outdoor kitchen area to turn the barbecue from a balancing act into something that actually feels like a proper setup.

Those are jobs for another season – possibly another year. For now, we’re resisting the urge to crack straight on, and letting ourselves enjoy the thing we’ve built before dreaming up the next bit. (This is growth. Ask anyone who’s renovated with us.)

Full circle

There’s a real full-circle feeling to standing on this patio. The whole renovation began with us knocking down one brick building at the side of the house; give or take three years, an extension and an entire cottage, the outdoor chapter is ending with us knocking down another.

The least glamorous corner of the whole plot – the one nobody would ever have looked at twice – has quietly become the best seat in the garden.

We’ll raise a glass to that. On the patio. In the evening sun. Roughly where the toilet used to be.