Location: Rural Canada/ interior BC. We moved into our new house at the end of June me, and we just finished installing 600 sq ft of pavers a couple weeks ago. Our choices were between replacing a slightly raised wood deck ( that we ripped out because it was rotten), doing a concrete patio, or doing a paver patio. We chose the paver patios because a) we could do it ourselves, b) we live in a very rural area where concrete (and paver) suppliers are extremely limited, and c) we plan on living here for 30+ years and wanted something that would last forever(ish) if properly installed. Luckily the base material here was good enough to make a solid base when compacted (as per the pros). We also luckily have some good connections with the main paver supplier here, so we got a great price on the pavers and were able to borrow key equipment like plate tampers and scree (sp??) rods to ensure the base was completely solid. All in, we have spent ~$5k to date, including pavers, 1/2 dump truck of regular sand, 1 full dump truck of topsoil( for the rest of the yard that we dug up to regrade) + “rural” delta very, and slightly over 600 sq ft of pavers, + 8 or so bags of polymeric sand to fill between the pavers. price does not include the $$ we spent to have the yard regrade to ensure some melt does not flow directly into our crawl space next year. The same patio installed by pros, even with our “friends and family rate” would have run us $8-9k.