Tag: backyard

Quick & Dirty Outdoor Table

We got home from a week vacation in Vegas to find that our house hadn’t floated away in the Toronto Floods, and that our garden had doubled in size because of said rain. Win win. We also came home to a heat wave. You’d think I would be prepared for the heat after staying a week in the desert. No siree. Vegas heat = dry and wonderful, Toronto heat = humid and sweaty. Needless to say on our first day back we didn’t do much. We played and cuddled with Odin (who we missed desperately) and had a few cocktails on the deck.

Our deck layout is small (big surprise), and features a bench and two chairs with a small folding table. This works well for the person sitting beside the table, but everyone else must hold on to their drinks, snacks, hats etc. Fed up with holding onto my wine glass, (yes yes I know, first world problems) I sprang into action and built a quick and dirty (literally) outdoor side table.

Last time I was up at the cottage, I stole borrowed an old battered 2×12 that was sitting under the bunkie. My Dad had used it for the concrete forms for the cottage foundation, and the old board was just hanging out under the bunkie left for a life of firewood/scrap. I saw the beauty in its weathered aged goodness and brought the board home with me. It has since sat littering the garage floor (much to El Granto’s chagrin) waiting for a project.

In my fit of DIY, I did up a quick drawing, decided on a design & size, and made a few cuts of the weathered wood (see cut list below.)

Outdoor Side Table

(19″ tall, 17″ wide and 11 5/8″ deep )
Note: My sketch is in no way to scale, or in correct proportions, or even straight. That’s just how awesome I am at drawing…

outdoortable

I drilled a few pocket holes (four in one end of each of the side boards, and two on each end of the shelf), and screwed in a few outdoor Kreg screws, and 15 minutes later we had a weathered side table. Perfect for holding a glass of wine, sunglasses & a magazine. I made the shelf big enough to hold our Bose sound dock. Cause no deck time is complete without some Robin Thicke.

DIY Outdoor side table
DIY Outdoor side table
Side Table
No sanding, no staining, no finishing. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Side Table
Room to hold a few bevy’s, magazines and sunnies

SOURCE LIST:

Buy List:
1 – 2×12 @ 8′ (Under the Bunkie)
12 – 2 1/2″ outdoor pocket hole screws (Lee Valley)

Cut List:
1 – 2×12 @ 17″ (top)
1 – 2×12 @ 13 1/4″ (shelf)
2 – 2×12 @ 17 3/8″ (sides)

Tools Used:
Miter saw
Drill
Kreg Jig
Measuring Tape

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

one out of five

Total Cost: $0 (booyakasha)

Outdoor Furniture Maintenance

**My heart is with those affected by the Boston Marathon tragedy. I cannot imagine the sorrow and terror for those involved. **

It’s (almost) spring in Toronto.  I hope.  My backyard still looks like a brown pile of old grass and sticks, but I do have a few budding spring bulbs in the front garden. So last weekend we hauled out the patio heater and the wooden patio furniture, and I declared it spring. I sat on my favorite chair with a cup of coffee and my ebook. I was still wearing winterboots and a vest, but hey I was outside. I was enjoying my coffee when I grazed my arm across the chair to find the wood scratchy and dry.  We have had this furniture for two years, and even though it sits under a covered deck, and gets put inside during the winter, its starting to show its age.

Our backyard furniture (photo from last summer)
Our backyard furniture (photo from last summer)

Its our fault. We know that we should oil the furniture at least once a year, we just, well, haven’t done it. It’s okay thou, we haven’t destroyed the furniture yet, but its high time we did some maintenance on it. So I broke out the (unopened) container of furniture oil we purchased with the furniture. I placed one of the chairs on some newspaper (so that I didn’t get the tinted oil all over the deck, cause I am bound to spill some) and got to work.

The chair all ready for its oil treatment
The chair all ready for its oil treatment

I used a soft rag and applied a thin but even coat of oil. I could immediately see the difference as the thirsty wood soaked in that oil.

The slat on the top has been oiled, whereas the slat at the bottom has not.
The slat on the top has been oiled, whereas the slat at the bottom has not.

Sorry for the terrible photo, it was one of those “grab a quick shot while not spilling oil all over the camera” situations.

Coffee in hand, I oiled away. About 20 minutes later, my coffee was empty (sad face) but one chair was done. It’s a bit of a PITA task (pain in the ass) but it makes such a difference. One chair down, a chair and a bench to go.

After the oil had dried, the chair arms were so smooth El Granto thought that I had sanded the chair.

Pretty freshly oiled chair arm
Pretty freshly oiled chair arm

It’s now ready for a summer full of backyard parties. Now if only the rest of my yard wasn’t full of dead plants, a sunken path, and a patchy brown lawn…

If you’re curious we have the Ikea Applaro armchairs and bench, and we used the Ikea Varda wood treatment oil. We are very happy with our Applaro furniture. It is very solidly built with beautiful Acacia wood. We purchased the furniture at Ikea’s summer midnight madness sale, and scored it for 50% off.

Underestimating the Task

One of my faults is that I am a bit of a dreamer. El Granto is the realist, and I have my head perpetually stuck in the clouds. I think we can do anything we put our minds to (within reason). I will research the hell out of things, and have confidence I can do a task before setting out. I may not however estimate how hard (mentally or physically) the task may be. I have confidence in our abilities, and often tooo much confidence.

Here are some examples:

  • I thought I could totes carry home two 8 foot lengths of 10″ tall mdf crown moulding on my own, walking, the 4km home from the lumber yard.  Half way home I called El Granto begging him to come help me.
  • I bought a kiddie pool for the dog and then had to carry it home (on my head) through busy streets during a heat wave.
  • When I bought 2 4×8 sheets of mdf for the guest room board & batten, got the lumber yard to cut into into 2″ x 8′ strips, then tried to carry the 50 pieces of wood home on a borrowed moving dolly that had a mind of its own. It kept trying to weave into traffic, or jackknife and spilling the boards everywhere. El Granto had to steer it with a piece of wood like a gondola all the way home.

Last night was another example. A nearby house is doing a bunch of renos, and I noticed some bricks in the construction debris.  I really want to make a backyard patio area with red bricks, so I stopped by and talked to the contractor and asked what they were doing with the bricks. Yesterday he gave us the all clear to come take as many bricks as we wanted. Awesomesauce! Now we just needed to get them home. El Granto tried to book a Zipcar van or truck, but as its the beginning of the month (and people are moving) there were no large vehicles available for the next few days.

Unperturbed by this, I convinced El Granto that we should go to the building site armed with a dolly, a granny cart, some milk crates and a bucket. We could fill up the containers with bricks, pile them into our dolly and cart and that we could make a few trips bringing bricks home. We loaded up the first cart worth, realized bricks weigh about 5lbs a piece, struggled home with them and swore to never do that again.

Hopefully this weekend we can convince bribe a truck owning friend with beer to help us shuttle the bricks. After they get home, and dry out, they will need some cleaning up, removal of mortar, and then hopefully they can become an awesome patio in the backyard this spring.

One milk crate holds 12 bricks. Each brick weighs 5lbs. So this crate-o-bricks is weighing in at 60lbs.
One milk crate holds 12 bricks. Each brick weighs 5lbs. So this crate-o-bricks is weighing in at 60lbs.

Have you taken on a task that’s too big (or heavy) lately?

Is it Spring Yet?

Last week I had an especially bad week. I went in for my second round of iron infusions, and this session was not kind to me. I came home with a fever and my whole body felt like it had been run over by a truck. I took a few days off and got some rest, and finally this week things are starting to get better. Continue reading “Is it Spring Yet?”

Backyard Mural – Ghost Sign Reveal

My backyard ghost sign mural is finally done. (there will be a how-to tomorrow, so check back if you want to know how we did it)

So here is some background. We had a boring beige cinderblock wall at the back of our yard. It was boring to look at, and well BEIGE. I cant leave anything beige in my wake, so I set out to ramp it up some. After we found a $9 ‘Oops’ can of paint at Home Depot, and my Mom picked up some chalk paint for us, we set out to create a faux Ghost Sign. What’s a ghost sign? Those old faded sign’s and ads on the sides of buildings! We live in an old storefront, so we wanted something that looked old and cool. What design did we end up going with? Inspired by this image of bold graphic beautiful type, we decided to do a typographic approach to our house number.

So here it is. The before and afters!

Before:

Beige cinder block wall

During:

Base colour of dark grey on the wall
Tracing the design onto the wall
The chalk outline
Paint on, ready for distressing

After:

I would like it more distressed but my arms hurt…

 

SOURCE LIST:

Materials:
Base Paint – Behr Premium Plus Ultra: Home Depot
Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Bright White: Diamonds & Toads

Tools Used:
Paint brush, tray, roller, tape, rag, sponge, muscles

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

Three out of five

Total Cost: $50

Backyard Mural Inspiration

Our house used to be a store. How cool is that?! We’ve been wanting to pay homage to that somehow when decorating the house. We have been on the hunt for an old grocery store sign for the kitchen (the storefront was originally built as a grocery store) and we want something barbershopy to reflect another one of the former businesses. (so if you come accross an old (cheap)barbers pole, let me know!)

Another aspect of old stores that I really love are ghost signs. Ghost signs are those old faded ads on the sides of buildings often advertising beer, liquor, cigarettes etc. I wish wish wish we had a ghost sign, but sadly we’re too close to our neighbors and have no walls that face the street. Sad face.

 

There is however a graffiti mural on the side of our garage that faces our neighbors yard. I love the idea of also having a mural on the side of the wall that faces our backyard. I don’t have any graffiti artist friends however and the painter friend I do have is incredibly busy and successful with his fine art career (go check out Martin Wittfooth’s work, it’s amazeballs.)

I also wanted something…well…cool. I didn’t want a sunflower and happy dancing children mural. I wanted something that I’d like to see hanging in my livingroom.

So… Now what? Stencil something? Design a mural on my own? Contact a community outreach program and see if they have any teens who want a canvas? Gah I have no idea. Then it struck me, a ghost sign! A great idea if I may say so myself. So I started researching and pinning.

But…wait…how do I make it look like it’s been there 50 years? I have NO idea. I could not find a faux ghost sign tutorial anywhere and had no idea where to start. It needed to be fairly durable (as it’s outside), but not look perfect and new. I contemplated using Elmer’s wood glue to try to do a crackle effect then sanding the paint. Or painting the mural then pressure washing the whole thing to try to wear off most of the paint. Or doing the design in chalk and then clear coating it, but really I was up a creek and had no idea where to start.

So the project sat for a few months until one day El Granto and I spied a can of dark grey flat exterior Behr Premium Plus Ultra paint in the ‘oops’ shelf at home depot. Usually the oops shelf is full of colors such as baby puke and mustard. However this looked like a pretty warm dark gray and it was priced at $9 (regularly $50+). We tossed it in the cart and decided to give it a try on the garage.

Two days later I was reading Centsatonal Girl and she posted about chalk paint. Hrrm…chalk paint? Could that work for my old worn looking ghost sign? I dunno! So I sent an email to the chalk paint people  and my local retailer and awaited their response with baited breath. (No really, I sat there watching the computer like a 14 year old girl waiting for a boy to txt her.)

All I can say thus far… is my Mom is heading out Saturday to pick up a can of chalk paint for me, and I will be putting on a coat of our $9 oops paint on the garage wall this weekend. Wish me luck!

 

DIY Outdoor Drapes

At about 3pm, the sun reaches our back deck in full force. If you happen to be sitting out there at that time, it goes from being a dappled shady retreat to a scorching desert. After getting sick of doing the deck chair shuffle until the sun entirely pushes us inside, we decided to buy some outdoor drapes.

Then we realized outdoor drapes are EXPENSIVE! They are really pricy! Especially for 12 foot long ones that I needed for our deck. I waffled over how to make it happen for weeks at a time, and then threw in the towel. We were not getting outdoor drapes.

Then inspiration struck, I could make some! But UGH, that requires a lot of fabric… and any fabric that is nice and heavy and blocks the light…is also expensive.  I wasn’t even considering using outdoor fabric.

Then it struck me. Drop cloths! People use those things for everything! I could definitely make outdoor curtains with them. So we headed to Home Depot to buy some 12′ long drop cloth panels, and to find some inspiration on how to hang them. Our deck is 12′ wide. Can we use curtain rods? Nope, couldn’t find any that big. Wooden dowels? Still not available that long. Gas line pipe? ALMOST! But it was 10′ long and heavy, so it would consist of using two pipes and probably having to have a bracket in the middle to hold the weight…Then El Granto had a brilliant idea. Aircraft cable! BINGO! The drop cloths were light, and the aircraft cable could be tensioned into our deck with a turnbuckle. It would be perfect! We picked up a 50′ aircraft cable kit, two turnbuckles, two 4×12′ drop cloths, some large cup hooks, and some tarp grommets.

Back at home, El Granto got up on the ladder and secured the cup hooks to the deck, and attached one end of the cable system. We measured out where we wanted the grommets to go on the drape panels (Odin really wanted to help)

Odin thinks the curtains are his new bed

Through some trial and error (who doesn’t put instructions on a grommet kit!?) We finally found the best way to put in the grommets. It involved a vice, some rags, a hammer, and a few swear words.  (sorry there are no photos, I was too busy using profanities to take any.) After the grommets were in I measured the drapes to hem them and went inside to get out the sewing machine. I managed to find my sewing machine easily enough, but do you think I could find the box with all the thread and notions?! Not a hope. So I grabbed some hemming tape, and ironed the hems in the drapes. I figured if they fell out, I would go buy some thread and sew them back up. Once they were hemmed, we threaded the grommets of the drape panels onto the aircraft cable, attached the cable to the other side and tensioned it with the turnbuckle.

Curtain threaded through the Aircraft Cable
Cup Hook, Turnbuckle & Aircraft Cable

YAY! SHADE! WOOT!
Just one small problem…the space of the cup hook, aircraft cable clamps and turnbuckle means that the drape does not stretch all the way to the side of the deck. One day when we have a bit more patience, we will remove the turnbuckle on the North end of the deck, where the most sun comes in  (you really only need one turnbuckle) and it will work and look much nicer.

But enough of my bitching, here are the pics!

Before!

Backyard Before (note this is from when we bought the house, so a few things have changed other than just the curtains)

 

After!

Curtains in Action
Curtains Drawn to one Side

*To answer a few of the questions you may be thinking of:

  • Will we leave them out in the winter? We will take them in during the winter, and put them through the wash if necessary
  • How have they held up so far? Amazing. Water doesn’t seam to soak into them when it rains, they never stay wet or damp, and show no signs of mold or any other nasties yet.
  • Would we change anything? Only adding a tie back/hook for when they are not in use, otherwise its perfect!
  • Added Bonus: We have had a sweltering summer, and we have been using the curtains to block some of the sun from hitting the back of the house, and to shade the a/c unit. It has worked wonders.

SOURCE LIST:

Materials:
2x 4×12 Drop Cloths: Home Depot (we only used 2 panels, but could have fit 3 or 4, if your deck gets full sun more panels may be required)
50′ Aircraft Cable Kit: Home Depot
Tarp Grommets: Rona
2 Large Cup Hooks: Home Depot
2 Turnbuckles: Home Depot
Iron-On Hemming Tape: Fabricland

Tools Used:
Ladder, Drill, Measuring Tape, Sewing Machine, Iron, Hammer, Sharpie, Screw Driver, Wire Cutters, Wrench

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

Two out of five

Total Cost: $50