How to start again. please advise. - Patio slabs

[quill]

Our garden is mainly patio ie a huge expanse. When we moved in, I got rid of the pointing that was left and tried to repoint ignoring the fact that not all slabs were level.
What a disaster! I bought ready mixed stuff and brushed it in. The outcome was horrible lime grey discolouration to the stone edges. Three years on and several pressure washing treatments later, the slabs have lost the pointing again and never came back to the beigey colour they were when we moved in.
To break up the amount of concrete, I've lifted areas of slabs and planted in the spaces.
This is all temporary ( but i'll keep the planted areas) and I want our garden to look nice now.
1. Would you buy more slabs considering there would be an awful lot of them so we are talking many £100 in just material?
2. If we used the old ones, how should we go about doing a proper DIY job? Lift a small area at a time, relevel properly ( looks like sand underneath) and just point? If so what do we use? Was the pinky stuff I bought the right stuff?

[lutonlagerlout]

TBH sounds knackered,you could take up the lot and relay,but by the sounds of it you need a subbase
have a look here for more info
cheers LLL

[Tony McC]

If the old stuff can be cleaned up satisfactorily, then re-use, otherwise, breeak them up into pieces no bigger than 50mm and mix in with granular material you need for a sub-base.

Whether you use old or new flags, all the laying advice you need is on the main website. The only additional info you need is that it's always easier to clear the site and start with a "blank canvas" rather than to try and do a re-lay job in a patchwork fashion.