My husband and I are lucky enough to have a great backyard and patio. Finding a rental with a fenced yard was a dream since we had two very young puppies and the patio was just icing on the cake. When we moved in it was late in the summer and we didn't exactly have the money or motivation to get patio furniture that would just need to be stored for the winter. Logical at the time but when the hubs and I invited his family over for a bbq earlier last month, we realized we had nothing! In an attempt to provide a seat for herself, my mother-in-law gifted us her three old robins egg blue [read hideous] plastic patio chairs. We now had a place for 3 people to sit at a time, musical chairs anyone??
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| Who thought this was a good color, honestly? |
About a week or so later, we began our search for a table and some chairs for no more than 150 and went straight to the thrifts stores. (Again, since we are renters, any larger of an investment seemed risky.) We hit the jackpot at a local thrift store with a great 6ft black wooden table with a steel frame. It cost us 40 bucks and a few painful hours trying to load it in our just too small CR-V. I cringe just thinking about about that day in all honesty, but at least we now had a table and 3 ugly chairs. Fast forward another two weeks and a purchase of four patio chairs (one sale for 20 a piece at a home improvement store) and we were well on our way to the great entertaining space we knew we could have.
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| Its not perfect, but its outdoors and it was 40 bucks people! |
We needed at least two more chairs for us to have family and friends over but we were already close to our budget, so we were going to need those hand me down plastics after all -mothers do know best! I grabbed some black glossy plastic grade spray paint and got to work.
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| Two coats of black Valspar Plastic Spray Paint (6 bucks at Lowes) |
A few hand cramps later, we had our functional party patio...for now anyway! We have already had the family over for dinner and some friends over for a bonfire and smore's. I have a good feeling about this summer!
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| The finished project, love it! |
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Personally I think what you are doing is fantastic! There are so many times in which I look around my home and feel something is missing, or I think something isn't being used so I should throw it away and find something new. The fact that I can now look to your blog for ideas on how to make improvements and renovations while saving money and my sanity is so encouraging!
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