I have front porchs on both the first and second floor of my house. The second story is more decorative and never used, but every year for Mother’s Day the only thing I ask for is hanging baskets. The first floor porch was never really used much until the first summer of the pandemic where I spent a lot of time out there reading - the furniture was handmedown wicker and very uncomfortable so the next year I invested in really nice chairs with thick cushions, decorative pillows and a table. This year I added a colorful outdoor rug. Unfortunately both porches need to be completely replaced - materials were all builder grade, almost 30 years old, so I’m not doing much else. It will be a costly replacement after we get the last kid mostly thru college but I’m looking forward to it - going to make it a few feet deeper, add ceiling fans, etc.
Thanks for the link upthread about the mosquito repellant - going to invest in that for sure! We live by the water and get a ton of mosquitos here!
I got a cheap indoor/outdoor rug at Costco last week - thought I couldn’t go wrong. Put it down on the deck. It poured last Saturday and the rug was soaking wet. If you walked on it, your shoes got soaking wet (even after it had stopped raining). So, for the party, we just rolled it out of the way. Now wondering if we should even bother putting it back…
This was my last splurge (in 2022) when I said, why am I using the old lounge chairs (that came with the house) that don’t lay flat or move easily? I spend half my summer in the chairs!
I guess there are plenty of things we could update - we’re using our old glass dining table with velour upholstered chairs under the gazebo, for instance. We’ve replaced the gazebo once and the cover several times. And the white resin round dining table down by the pool is a bit the worse for wear. Husband keeps buying new flowers when old pots die off; when I had to water while he was recovering from surgery, I think I counted well over 50 pots and such. So I sure am not buying more! We get hummingbirds without a feeder.
But I am so comfortable that I am fine with shabby! And oh so very grateful that mosquitoes are no longer part of my life.
@ChoatieMom oops! I don’t think I even realized there were two different threads but I was obviously reading both! Thanks for sharing linking here as well for those who might have been womdering what I was referencing.
I got rid of an outdoor rug like that. Every time it rained, the rug held the water. I got tired of walking on it and having wet feet. It took a long time to dry so what was the point of it.
I’ve been scheming to get a tiki bar in the back yard near our pool for a couple of years now. My wife is agreeable, and even encouraged me to buy a few tiki bar decorations on a trip to Hawaii last year. But I missed the sale from the company I was interested in (Taverns To Go) and am not handy enough to build one myself. If I can find an old wooden bar I am thinking of turning the end of our porch into a bar with lights and tiki decorations, though my wife is less supportive of that idea since it leaves little room for our outdoor dining table. If anyone has any affordable but still nice outdoor tiki bar ideas I’d love to see some options.
We had a tiki umbrella in this six-sided bar-height table at our previous house, but it didn’t weather well in the AZ sun, so we tossed it for a canvas one from Costco. Even without the tiki umbrella, the table still had a “party” vibe as the inset plastic buckets around the umbrella pole could be filled with ice and cans/bottles of beer, soda, water, etc. The table also converted to a fire pit with a propane tank in the base (umbrella removed, of course), but we never used that. In any case, we liked the shape of this table rather than the traditional oblong tiki bar because guests could be seated conversationally in the round. We purchased it at a home show from a local pool and patio furniture vendor. It got a ton of use.
Thanks for sharing linking here as well for those who might have been womdering what I was referencing.
