Step Outside

With Summer in the air (at least according to the calendar) thoughts of cookouts,  gardening and soaking in the sun have been filling my mind. We have a deck area off the small porch at our back door.  Mr. built it about 10 years ago and we have enjoyed it.

We just power washed the deck and painted it with a product called Restore. It is not as thick as other products but did seal the splintering deck boards. Our table and chairs are there and we have a small cast iron chiminea . (I ruined the suspension on my last car lugging that thing home from the Cape one summer!) We really do like to sit out during the summer but when the sun starts going down the mosquitoes make it impossible to stay out.

Don't you love plastic summer dishes from Big Lots! 

Looking at the back yard from the newly painted deck.

Once the porch was screened in last year it was really too late to worry about furnishing or decorating  it. The stores had packed up all their summer stuff by then and we were out of money. We had gotten two rattan chairs and a nice table for FREE from the same place I had gotten our lamps that I upcycled and we made do. The chairs were very straight backed and not very comfortable for relaxing on the porch but they looked nice.

We picked it back up this year with a fresh coat of porch cement paint. The ugly gray cement looks much nicer now!   I purchased an indoor/outdoor rug with lots of colors at the Christmas Tree Shops.  The stuff you can find in these stores-dangerous!!  I walk in there for one thing and before I get five feet in the door I am distracted and totally loosing focus. I found two chairs at Lowes. They have the wicker/rattan look but they are a poly or plastic. I found the cushions there, also and they had all the same colors as the rug! Yay!

The two lanterns I found on a local Facebook yard sale page for a small fraction of the price for new. (Melted candles included!)

Join me for some lemonade?

All put together it is a lovely addition to our outdoor living space; a nice room outside but protected from the sun or bugs in the evening.  It is nice for coffee  and a quiet place to read in the morning.  Maybe it will be where I start writing blog posts from, at least for the summer. If you ring the doorbell and I don't answer come around back-that's probably where you'll find me.

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