Deck Makeover Part II

Man oh man! Our deck makeover turned into a WAY bigger project than anticipated. Doesn’t that always seem to be the case? Well, it definitely is for me. 😭

When we moved into our home, I wasn’t a huge fan of the deck. I honestly don’t like the layout and I especially didn’t like the color or the fact that we had zero privacy. But instead of focusing on what we didn’t have or what I didn’t like, I worked with what we did have and everything seemed easier after that. Changing my perspective was definitely the biggest obstacle.

If you missed part I of the deck makeover CLICK HERE

At the end of part I, I still had a lot of painting to do. One week and one very bad sunburn later, I was done painting!

After the deck was painted, we removed the rusty light fixture.

And replaced it with this one! So much better right? Bonus, the light was $12! I purchased it from Lowe’s.

Next, I painted the trim around the French doors and gave them a good scrubbing.

It looked really bad!

But after a little TLC and some paint the doors looked a hundred times better! I found the woven rug at Wayfair for under $50.

During one of my 6,435,456 trips to Lowe’s I found this black metal plant stand for $24.

I gave it a little makeover and voila!

Ummm…P.S. how cute are the topiaries? I found them at our local nursery and fell in love. 😍

After all the little details were taken care of, it was time to figure out how to utilize the big open space. I thought about adding a fire pit at first. Then a hammock. I was kind of all over the place at first. After a couple weeks of scrolling through Pinterest and talking with my hubby, I  decided to build a dining table for the space. It just made sense. We host a summer party every year, and every year we have had to get creative with the table and seating. We always ended up using pallets to make a table and pillows on the ground for seating. I did love the pallet table, but then after the party we would tear it down and the pallets would sit on the side of our house for months.

Building the table was the easy part, CLICK HERE for the tutorial, but picking out chairs and the rug is a different story. I must have looked at 10 different websites trying to find affordable chairs. I ended up buying 2 sets of chairs from Wayfair.

The others I already had. 3 are actually from the dining room, well because, money. We don’t sit at the dining room table very much, so for now I am using them outside. 🤗 It’s a lot less expensive when you shop your own home. Don’t you agree? 😜

I ended up not liking the second set against the table so put them next to the window instead. I was going for a more casual setup which is why I mixed and matched the chairs. Plus the different styles give this space more character. The mesh chairs are definitely my favorite. 😍

I went with a blue and beige rug to give this space a pop of color. I stepped out of my comfort zone on this, but I actually really love the rug. Bonus, it was $144! That’s a score for 8×11’ rug!

After the dining space was complete, I hung the rest of the string lights. I would say hanging the string lights was the most frustrating part of this makeover. 😑 I think I broke about 15 bulbs trying to hang them. 😭 I purchased the wooden rods at Lowe’s for $3 each and secured the lights using a staple gun. To secure the rods, I used deck screws. I dont really like the way they look, so I might end up painting them white to match the deck, but definitely not anytime soon. 😂

Now, the landscaping. It was bad. Like really bad. 🙈

The first thing we did was decided on the outline of the flower bed, then the weed pulling and digging began. Once we had most of the plants and flowers planted, we laid down weed barrier fabric inside the flower beds and around the flowers to prevent the weeds from growing back. I highly recommend using the weed barrier fabric! Don’t skip that step if you plan to DIY a flower bed. Even if you dig all the weeds out. They will come back.

All the flowers and plants that we put in the flower bed are perennials. We chose perennials since they come back every year (or at least that’s the goal) in the hopes the upkeep is low maintenance and less money spent over time.

We planted hostas, lavender, lime hydrangeas, and astra blue balloon flowers around the deck. All perennials. Then outlined the flower bed using mini flagstone wall stones from Lowe’s. We double stacked them. The stones are usually $1.38 each, but we bought a bulk of them during the Memorial Day sale and saved a little bit of money on them. I took a picture of the item number in case you like them.

Side note, the stones are heavy! Especially when you are carrying them by hand from the garage to the backyard. Good thing my son always has friends over. I made them help me. 😂

The last thing we had to do was mulch the areas we missed. 20+ bags later and we were done!

Now that the deck and landscaping are done, we couldn’t be happier! This turned into a 5+ week project, but we are both over the moon with how it turned out. It would have taken a lot less time, but we have things like kids and full time jobs and those ALWAYS take priority. ❤

And that’s a wrap friends! I hope you enjoyed my post and you leave here feeling inspired to create an outdoor space you love. Make sure to check out part I of the deck makeover HERE if you missed it. I also linked most of the items in this post under Shop This Post below.

Until next time. Xo

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