The accoutrements are what really matters.
In the driveway, about 50 feet from the site.
And unless someone from the thread wants to drop by, it’s all going to be me. My parents will be in town, and they can help along the lines “hold this non-heavy thing still for a second,” but that’s it.
Lot of good posts about the patio and work. I came in to mention safety.
Hydrate yourself. This work is harder than you may think.
Eye protection. Not just when cutting stones. Wind and sand or rock dust can end up being very painful.
Heavy duty gloves. Those rocks can be sharp! And any cut edges of stone will be.
Knee pads are a good idea. Comfort, for one, and those sharp edges and tiny little rocks are a pain.
Bugs. Be on the watch when digging around or when moving piles, etc… Spiders, scorpions, even snakes (snakes are my favorite bug!). Ground nesting hornets can be very mean.
Sun protection. You’ll be tempted to work on your tan. Burnt ears, nose, and lips can be the result. Exposed skin can burn fast anywhere on your body. A floppy hat and sunscreen are good ideas.
Lifting: some things may require two people. A wheelbarrow is a great tool.
Enjoy being outside!
And if you haven’t spent ALL day in the sun in awhile you may find that hair on top has thinned out a bit since the last major exposure and is now an inadequate blocker of the sun 
Wear a hat.
Oh, and the ole back. All that lifting, carrying, and stoopping down can get to be a bit much. Might want to get one of those back brace / torso girdle? thingy to wear. And you might want to come up with a rough work plan like okay, this is 10 percent of the work, then this in another 10 percent and so on and then note how much you are getting done in relation to the time you have to do it.
I spent five summers laying pavers (in suburban Maryland, even). They look great when they’re finished, and if they’re done well they look great for years afterwards. It takes a lot of work to do them right, though.
The most important part is the site prep. Because we usually used 4" tall pavers, we’d excavate an area with an extra foot on each side (so your 10x15 patio gets a 12x17 excavation) a full foot below finished grade. The patio gets 7" of compacted gravel, and we’d spend a pretty hefty chunk of time leveling out this subbase - knocking down high spots, filling in low spots, and running the tamper over it again and again. If the gravel subbase is uneven, the sand will eventually migrate, and when the sand migrates your pavers end up buckling. Bang a couple of rebar rods in around the patio and run a line with a level on it between them. Add a 1-2% slope to make sure your patio drains, and measure down from the line to the gravel - it should be the same distance over the entire patio.
Once the subbase is done, we’d put down 1-1/4" of sand. We always had some steel fence posts, so we could lay them down on the gravel (this is an easy way to tell if your subbase is level enough), throw sand in between them, and run a straight 2x4 to level out the sand surface. Fill in any gaps with a trowel, and lay the pavers directly in the screeded sand in whatever pattern you’ve chosen. Pay attention to the pattern. There’s nothing more discouraging than having to undo a couple of hours of work because you rotated one block wrong. Lay the pavers flat on the sand, and don’t let any of the edges dig in or disrupt the smoothed surface. You can walk/kneel on interior ones as you lay them, but stay off of the edge pavers.
Once you’ve got the entire patio laid, snap a chalk line along each edge and make any cuts you need to make. Cut each one to fit, and replace them in the same spot they came from. If you need to mark the cuts with anything other than chalk, make your marks on the waste side of the cut.
After you’ve got the square patio laid out, you install the edging. Using a trowel, remove the sand up to the edge of the outside pavers, leaving only what’s underneath the stones. Butt your edging material directly up against the stone, keeping the bottom flat on the gravel subbase, and anchor it into the gravel with landscape spike nails. Pay special attention to the corners, because those are the spots where sand is most likely to escape - make sure you’ve got joints that are flush, and when you backfill around the corners make sure you’re pushing the edging back toward the pavers and not just throwing dirt over it.
With the edging in, sweep sand into the joints between the pavers - fill in every joint where it’s trickling down. With the joints filled, run the tamper over the entire patio. The sand will all fall down the cracks - fill 'em up again and repeat. This will lock everything into place, and it’s also a good way to see if you’ve got a stone or two sitting a little too high. Don’t panic if you do - you can pull one or two out, scoop out or add a little sand, and reseat them without loosening the entire patio. Backfill and seed the lawn over the edges where your excavation was bigger than the finished patio, pull up a lawn chair, and have a well deserved beer.
I don’t want to sound discouraging, but I’d advise you not to do this now. You’re looking at a project that would take three full-time hardscapers who know what they’re doing two days. The excavation and leveling is definitely a two man job, and laying pavers by yourself is a pain in the ass because you can only carry so many. It’s hard on the knees and back to start with - having to get up and carry another armload every 10 bricks just makes it tougher. Fifteen years after I laid my last professional paver, it’s not something I’d try to do by myself, and it’s not something I’d try to do in a liited time.
How deep did he dig? My bit of advice from experience was going to be don’t go overboard digging your foundation. I put in a paver patio about 12’ by 12’ several years ago and dug the recommended depth, which I can’t remember now, but it was something like 6 inches of gravel and 2 inches of sand, 8 inches total. That was a bitch to do by myself with a shovel.
Shortly after that I helped my dad put in a paver patio and we only dug enough for about 2 inches of gravel and an inch of sand it has held up perfectly fine.
This is pretty strongly affected by the native soils. If you’re working in coarse grained, sandy, gravelly soils, you don’t need as much of a subbase because those soils don’t hold a lot of water and they aren’t as prone to heaving. Finer silts and clays need the deeper gravel base to take up any movement without disturbing the patio.
The soil in furt’s neck of the woods is generally fine enough to require the deeper base.
If you’re going to build a rectangle, depending on what shape your stones are, and how you lay them out, you might not need to make a single cut. I built mine (I think it’s roughly 16x20) and just stopped where I wanted to be and and at a full course.
Look for polymeric sand for the last layer under, and what you put between your stones. It sets up nicely like mortar almost, blocks weeds (none in the 3 years since I did my patio), and can be bought in smallish buckets for annual touchups. You sweep it in, make sure your surface is clean, and mist the whole patio to set the sand.
Once you’re done, consider a sealer. It can be sprayed or rolled on, is minimum fuss, and they have wet and dry looks. The wet look really looks nice. I touch up the sand and reseal every fall.
For the edges, they make plastic edges that you put up against the edges and stake in with plastic stakes. They’re not visible once you replant grass next to the patio. Expect lawn damage, so plan on needing to restore area immediately around your new patio. Good luck!
Thanks all for the input.
Enginerd, you gave me a lot to chew on. I’m reaching out to some friends who work in the trades to see if they know of someone I can hire to help out but who would cost less than just hiring a contractor.
When I did mine, I hired a guy to do the rough clearing and leveling of the area with a bobcat. Since I knew him, I also borrowed his laser level. You’ll want to use that and prep about a square yard at a time for pavers to be laid to make sure you’re keeping a slight pitch away from the house and that it’s even.
Make sure you do this in the dead of summer. That always helps. 
Don’t forget to consider what you’re going to do with the dirt that you take out of the hole for your foundation. You might get away with scattering it around your yard but if you don’t spread it evenly you’ll end up with a very uneven yard. If you check craigslist you may find somebody in your area looking for extra fill dirt - that’s a win win for you. You get free haul away and maybe even some extra hands to help dig your foundation!
Got spots in the yard that need it.
It now appears I am going to hire my own personal Mexican laborer. He’s not a licensed contractor, so he works cheap, but he’s highly recommended from someone I trust. On the downside, I will likely never pass Senate confirmation hearings.
Have your wife pay him. You’re out of the loop. Senate can go watch reruns of What’s Happening
This thread makes me think about this summer’s Most Dreaded Task ™.
The lovely people who lived in our house before us (and they were very nice) decided to put in a patio made of pavers.
- It is raised and there is no support for the stones on the edge. They wobble if you happen to step on one (which is frequent). I have put plants on them to keep people from getting hurt.
- The stones that are on the ground were not dug out or levelled at all. It looks like a wave of stones and there are huge puddles when it rains.
- It wasn’t tramped down enough so the stones in the raised area have sunk in some areas and raised in others. (Again, more puddling and tripping.)
It just keeps getting worse and worse.
So, we get to take the whole thing apart and do our best to put it back together properly. I don’t even really know what’s inside of the raised part of the patio for fill. It could be clay for all I know. How on earth will I haul it away! <faints>
Any tips? Calling in a pro is out of the question as we have spent this years alloted house budget to tear out and rebuild our bathroom (mold problems, has to be done).