[*Disclosure: This post is in collaboration with Kärcher. All opinions and thoughts are of course our own! ]
It may have taken us almost 5 years to get round to improving our outdoor space, but work has finally started!
We’d not really planned on tackling the outdoor space yet, but on a sunny day last week when we were sat outside trying to relax, I got so sick of seeing the ugly, weed-covered tarmac that I asked Jan if he could “just” take it up – and that’s what he did!
We’ve taken up the broken driveway, removed a huge chunk of the tarmac that covered most of the garden and in a further attempt to get the space looking a bit better we’ve now also cleaned and de-weeded our patio with the help of our new Kärcher K4 Compact Home pressure washer.
Our patio was a mess. The paving is uneven, there were weeds everywhere and it was covered in dirt. It’s an area of the garden that will still need ripping out and replacing at some point in the future, but the improvement that an hour of removing weeds and a good clean can make is amazing!
We love this pressure washer and we love that it comes with a surface cleaner attachment that made cleaning the patio really easy and much less dirty than just using the nozzle which inevitably tends to produce a lot of spray when you use it.
For us though, using the nozzle for cleaning all of the joints between the slabs was inevitable and whilst it’s not exactly a clean job, it’s amazing what a difference it makes and is definitely worth a few speckles of dirt.
The Kärcher K4 pressure washer comes with two different nozzles one for high-pressure cleaning and one that has a nozzle where you can adjust the pressure which means that you can clean more sensitive areas, too.
On surfaces like brickwork, you have to be careful as high water pressure can damage both the brick and mortar leaving them vulnerable to frost, so being able to adjust the pressure on the high-pressure cleaner is ideal.
In addition to the countless available attachments for cleaning almost anything you could imagine, we love that there are also loads of different types of detergents available like a wood cleaner, car shampoo, stone cleaners, etc. which you can just plug into the pressure washer and get cleaning.
We knew that the patio was dirty, but we were still totally amazed by how much dirt came up. It was almost like drawing a picture with the water. I guess we have no more excuse for a dirty outside and with the patio looking so much better, all we need to do is get the rest of the garden sorted!
Do you have a pressure washer? How do you maintain your outdoor space?
Vitor says
What a great job! This machine make a life a lot better. I think i need to pick one for my house. Its going make a lot of things better looking!
Thanks for tip Christine and Jan. Keep going! :)
Christine says
Thanks Vitor! It’s amazing what a difference a good clean can make!
Cx
Louise says
That looks really nice, love slate. Isnt working with water fun? Everyone has these kärcher-monsters here, and everyone have large wood patios, and how they need cleaning… Probably the most annoyning sounding garden tool of them all. they should coordinate their efforts instead of turning the entire month of june into a nnnnnnnn. Arghh! Well, sometimes hard measures are called for! Are you going to refill the tarmac with gravel? Or more slate?
Christine says
Haha, you’re right – but a bit of noise is well worth the clean result! I think people should coordinate their lawn mowing activities – some days it seems non stop around here! ;)
We’re going to replace the tarmac with a mixture of grass and gravel. We’ll have a strip of gravel along the wall to keep it clean and grass covering the rest. That’s the plan for now at least! Things have a tendency to change around here ;)
Cx
Lucy says
Ooh you got the K4! We went for the K2 home and car last month. It’s so satisfying seeing all the weeds and muck disappear (I don’t care how sad I sound, that surface cleaner attachment is awesome). Your patio looks loads better, you guys are doing an awesome job getting things done both inside and out! :)
Christine says
Aww, that’s so kind, thanks Lucy! I completely agree with you about the surface attachment, it works great and causes much less mess than just using a nozzile.
Cx
PS. We used to have the K2, too! It was one of the first things we bought when we moved into our house. It still worked great after 5 years of cleaning a lot of dirt and we were really happy with that one, too.