The Deck: Its done!

After so much work it is SO wonderful to finally be about to sit outside and relax in our outdoor space.

I honestly never thought our rustic mess of a deck could ever look this good ... and I'm so glad I was wrong.

Its hard to believe we started with this:



And now have this:







Much better, huh?

I was lucky to find the furniture for a steal at a summer preview sale back in March. The fabric color didn't exactly scream 'summer' but I really liked the style (and color) of the metal frame so I went for it. A couple of months later I was looking through the Restoration Hardware (love that store!) outdoor living catalog and saw the 'Carmel' collection and I couldn't believe how much it looked like my set. I'm sure theirs is better quality but we got an entire set for quite a bit less than just one of their chairs - I love it when I can get the look for less!

I couldn't find any pillows I liked so I bought some indoor/outdoor fabric and made my own.



The white garden drums came from Big Lots back in February. I thought they would make great side tables and for $20 each I couldn't get them in my shopping cart quickly enough. Since then I have seen them in a bunch of stores but always for quite a bit more.



We added drapes to give us a little privacy from our super close rear neighbors. They don't completely obscure their view but its better than them being able to see and hear our every move. Instead of getting special outdoor drapes we just bought some inexpensive cotton panels from Ikea. We don't get any rain in the summer so all they have to deal with is the intense sun and they're already white so we don't have to worry about them getting bleached out.

I got pretty creative with the rods because after pricing outdoor drapery rods I decided they were way too expensive. I work next door to a small hardware store so on my lunch break one day last week I wandered around to see what I could find. I ended up getting electrical conduit and pipe straps for under $10. They made perfect rods and we like the slightly industrial look!





In the end we decided against a shade cloth 'roof'. We thought it would look better without it, and anyway its not like we're sitting out there in the middle of the day when the sun is overhead.



Its really cosy at night with the lanterns and string of lights lit.





We tried it out with the curtains down (oops I guess I should have ironed them) and it made a nice cosy little room.



Wanna come over and hang out?

The Deck: we're making progress!!!

Last time I posted about the deck we still had to replace the removed boards and then power wash everything. Oh how many hours of labor ago that seems now ...

But first here is a picture I just found. I took this when we went back to look at the house to see if we really wanted to put in an offer. Very, ummm, rustic!



So back to the present day. After replacing the boards, removing the shade cloth, and power washing we got to this point:



Definitely an improvement but still not the look we were going for. The deck is made of (old, weathered) redwood and I think most people would go the route of buying a redwood colored deck stain and going to town but we just weren't feeling the red tones. In fact, we didn't even really love the brown look. So we thought we'd create a lot of work for ourselves and do this ...


... and we LOVE it!!!

We did 1 coat of stain blocking primer + 1 coat of solid stain in white on the pergola, and 1 coat of semi-transparent stain in gray on the deck. I got stuck when we were choosing the deck color and had it narrowed down to 2 grays so Josh made the final choice and he definitely made the right one. The brown shows through a bit and almost makes the deck look a bit like drift wood, which I love.



I always hear decorators/designers say that paint (well in this case stain) is the cheapest way to transform a space and that is definitely true in this case. I couldn't stand the deck before and now I love it!



There are a few spots that need touch-ups, and we still need to put the trim back around the bottoms of the pillars but most of the work is done. And by work I mean almost 30 hours of painting - sheesh!

Also, I love how it looks without shade cloth but we really need it out back so we'll be reinstalling it sometime this week.

I cant wait for the weekend when we'll be setting up our outdoor room with goodies I've been collecting since the winter!