Hey y’all! I hope you’ve been enjoying these first few Spring weekends! Roland and I spent much of this past weekend outside cutting limbs and pulling weeds. Who needs a gym membership when there’s yard work, right? It’s slowly but surely starting to look like a civilized backyard that you’d be proud to take home to mama. And as I mentioned in last week’s deck reveal post, I’ve got a bunch of ideas for our new deck that I can’t wait to tackle! Today I wanted to share them with you to see what you think and maybe inspire you to re-imagine your outdoor space–whether it be an apartment balcony, a porch, a patio, or wherever you hang outside!
So first up, as a refresher, here’s our new 10×10 deck:
And another view:
The image below is my inspiration for the overall look of the space we want to create:
(Amy and Erich’s deck as featured on Designsponge.com)
I feel like I’d never leave my backyard if it looked like that, honestly. So beautiful! We definitely want to go with a gray stain with white rails and pickets. Bench seating with storage beneath would be a huge bonus for storing outdoor decor and toys plus the 2.3 tons of bubble blowing apparatuses we’ve accumulated (seriously, toddlers and bubbles: match made in heaven).
In terms of built-in elements, we want to add:
- A gate in front of the steps
- Rails going down the steps
- A built in bench running next to the support post
You may be wondering why we didn’t have our contractor just do those things for us. The answer: #1 to save some cash! and #2 to give us the satisfaction of doing some of the work ourselves.
The gate and rails are pretty straight forward, so let me show you where we wanna add the bench:
I also want to add a mini table top between the benches attached to the support post like this:
And here’s a little design board I made with the other elements I’m feeling for the space:
I’m thinking once the benches are in, we’ll have room to comfortably add two more free moving chairs. I really like wicker chairs like the ones above. I’d bring in some fun tropical prints for cushions on the chairs and bench plus a pillow or two for the bench seating. I want to mount some small plants on the exterior wall adjacent to the bench–how cool is that! Maybe some succulents. They don’t take up much space but are eye-catching nonetheless.
Last but not least, let’s talk lighting! This is the fixture we currently have:
Not very inspiring. Since we plan to remove the iron door, we don’t have to worry about clearance (since the main backdoor opens in, not out), which opens up so many possibilities! We live in south Texas so we’re heavily leaning toward a ceiling fan light fixture like the one on my board.
That about sums it up! What do y’all think? Is there anything you would add? Fill me in on any outdoor updates you’ve got planned 🙂
