August 16, 2017

5 Simple Ways to Spruce Up Your Backyard for Less

Inside: Five ways to spruce up your backyard for less; DIY Chevron Wall, Colourful patio updates; using a paint sprayer to give furniture a facelift; making outdoor accessories

We’ve been back from vacation for a few days now and our plan is to spend as much of the rest of summer in our backyard oasis as possible. I say ‘oasis’ – it’s a work in progress. For whatever reason, outdoor projects always seem to take more time, energy and money than indoor projects and some years, we don’t do much outdoors at all…at least nothing blog-worthy. I’m constantly searching for ways to spruce up the backyard for less! Less time, less money, less energy – amiright?! 🙂 spruce up your backyard for less

We’ve done quite a few outdoor project posts – here are some of them!

Here are 5 Simple Ways to Spruce Up Your Backyard for Less

Use Paint or Stain

This one seems quite obvious, but my first idea is to PAINT or STAIN any outdoor structures you might have! For example, we painted our builder-grade shed a bright pop of ocean blue and it is now one of my FAVOURITE things to look at. I mean, who knew I’d love a storage shed so much? But I do. I absolutely ADORE it. Here’s the shed BEFORE.

And this is the shed after a couple of days of painting. The white trim is actually a stain because as you can see the trim is made of exterior grade decking lumber. This shed is into it’s fifth summer and is still looking just as fabulous as the day we painted it!

Plant New Grass Seed or Lay Sod

Plant some stuff! Even if it’s in pots or just a small patch of grass, adding a little bit of greenery goes a very long way. For example, we had a lot of ‘pulling out and weeding’ to do in the first few years of living here, so slowly we added grass seed to areas of the lawn. With some careful attention (as in don’t let the dog pee on the new grass), you’ll have a bit more life in your space in no time. Grass seed can be costly, but if you’re just doing a small patch, it can be fully seeded for less than a couple hundred dollars.

Where we live, the best times to seed are in the early spring (so late April-May) and then the early Fall (late August-September). If you want something even LESS intense? Just pick up some potted annuals. I mean, who doesn’t love a bright cheery pot of flowers in the yard?

Paint Shutters or Exterior Furniture

This is a really easy way to give your backyard a pop of colour and a happy update in very little time. I used a paint sprayer to tackled our outdoor shutters in a matter of a few hours. As in they were down, prepped, painted, and rehung in one day!

Build a Privacy Wall or Trellis

A trellis is on my to-do list for this summer …I’m not sure it’ll happen, but we’ll see! Last year, we spent a weekend building our Chevron Privacy Wall and We LOVE IT. It cost less than $150 and once we measured, it took about a day to assemble. You can see the FULL TUTORIAL here. It adds a really luxe feel to our otherwise bland backyard … I’d love to build a matching trellis for the side of the shed!