2019 has been the year of exterior work on our home. We’ve been dreaming and planning to tackle this for the past 3 years. Our plans included repainting the exterior and addressing all the wood rot, installing a new patio, and landscaping our backyard! We knew all the projects we wanted to do would be a lot of money (to us), especially since we pay cash for all renovation projects, so we put it off and saved our pennies. Earlier this spring we finally felt ready to tackle all the exterior projects we planned and started meeting with contractors for exterior painting and patio installation. We luckily found contractors we liked and scheduled the patio to be installed in June and the painting to be completed in July.
Spoiler – yes, these projects are already done, and I cannot wait to share all about them over the next few weeks!!
What about the bathroom project that we started 6 months ago? Why yes, we are still working on the upstairs bathroom too – it’s taken a back seat to other priorities unfortunately, but we hope to wrap it up soon – more to come in blog posts later this month! That’s renovation life for you. Things always take longer than you plan.
We are so very excited about our new patio area! Our previous patio was small and sunken due to water issues we had in our back yard, which mean it was always covered in dirt and mud. Not exactly an inviting space. Plus, it meant the dogs constantly tracked mud into the house. Our new patio is larger and slightly elevated off the ground, meaning our patio furniture and grill all fit on the patio and it hopefully won’t be covered in dirt and mud all the time! We are so thrilled to have an outdoor space we want to use.
THE PLAN FOR THE PATIO
Below I am sharing more about the overall feel I want our patio space to have and the plans we have in place to make it happen. I want it to be a welcoming, comfortable, and relaxing environment that is simple and not overly styled. With plenty of seating and greenery. BUT I am challenging myself to use only items I already have and not buy anything new, unless I can find something thrifted! We have enough furniture (I think), but in its current state it doesn’t feel very cohesive… so it is doable, I will just have to get creative.
String lights are must! We have these lights and just need to re-hang them now that the patio and exterior painting projects are finished.
We have two of these comfy chairs and love them! The bonus is they are a chair and half so we can each sit in one with one dog next to each of us. Priorities.
We have a wood burning fire pit, but the ease of a gas fire pit is so nice! I found a similar version ofthis adorable fire pit on clearance last summer. We have only used it a handful of times, but we have loved it. It does fit a full-size tank of propane.
Our existing round table is in desperate need of a refinish and has a lot of water damage (don’t forget to use patio covers on wood furniture that will get rained on!), but I plan on trying to salvage it.
These white aluminum chairs are similar to the light gray chairs we have. We learned out lesson with steel patio furniture – it rusted and leaked rusty water all over our old patio!
I want to add a lot of greenery! Both to add life to the concrete patio area, but also to add a bit of privacy.
We are hoping to get the patio finished in a few weeks so we can continue enjoying it for the rest of the fall. Stay tuned for more about our exterior projects!
