All the DIY details on our budget patio makeover

For this year – we are finished 🙂 Yes. Summer is so short where we live (and in fact, it’s still been tough to find a weekend without rain!), we committed to three outdoor projects for our budget patio makeover and promised to continue our work next spring. But we are both quite happy with what we’ve got so far! Here are all the DIY details on our budget patio makeover!

In case you need a reminder – this is what it looked like BEFORE. 

The whole thing started when we cleaned and did some demo on parts of the deck. Then we built that awesome DIY Chevron Privacy Wall and capped it all off with our bright, blue, up-cycled doors turned shutters. 

We replaced our old, gross (and not comfy) patio cushions with bold, black and white striped ones to bring a more graphic element to the space. Then I softened the look with the addition of the bold floral toss cushions. (I’ve sourced this at the bottom of this post if you’re looking for specifics or similar products.)

The greenery is fairly simple. We are right on the coast, so it’s either really foggy (and wet) or windy, meaning we have to be careful about what we put in pots. I picked up some simple annuals to put in my little thrifted planters and Dan planted some tall grass in a large pot to add texture. I love the addition of the outdoor tabletop greenhouse with galvanized pots and some cut boughs and flowers. We have quite a bit of foliage in our yard, so trimming some on Saturday and enjoying them to Sunday works well – plus, it forces me to prune things 😉 

The biggest change really has been the Chevron Wall. It went up over the course of a couple days (you can see the full build tutorial here), and it definitely changes the feel of the space to something a bit more modern. In fact, it has spurred us to start looking at our next big outdoor project (definitely for next year) that will happen at the other end of our yard. We’d love to add a secondary patio area and more wood elements in a vegetable garden. When it comes to decking out the deck space, I’ve kept it simple. A bright table runner on top of an old barn board table top (perched on four concrete blocks!) with some potted plants. No fuss, no muss. We love the look of outdoor lanterns, but once again, the weather here just isn’t really amenable to using them… so for this year, we drew the line at spending cash on things we knew we wouldn’t use. 

The shutters tie everything together so beautifully. (You can see how we painted them in no time in this post here!) We used the same colour blue as we used on our back yard shed, so suddenly our deck went from being dreary and dingy to telling a colour story. I love when that happens. 

Things we’ve still got on our list (for next year?)

• Get the staining done – but increase the scope of the job to include our upper deck areas and the front deck too
• Add in some seating and tables to the ‘under deck’ (which now that it’s clean, I’ve been using almost every day!)
• Build some sort of dining table
• Invest in an outdoor shade umbrella

Outdoor projects are among the most labor intensive. So for now, we’re just going to enjoy what little summer we have left in our new DIY deck nook 🙂

Interested or inspired by some of the design choices in our space? Here are some recommendations for you 🙂

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