Operation Outdoors

May 30, 2018 by Ruthie 2 Comments

Happy Wednesday friends! It has been a hectic couple weeks over here at the Tabone household. While wrapping up the finishing touches for our Gym/Guest Room Makeover for the One Room Challenge we had guests visiting us from California. The next week my Mom came to visit for a week. Now we are just getting over a few colds and a fever in our house. Hoping this is the last sickness for a while. This winter really had us cooped up and we got sick way too much! I’m loving being outside and in the fresh air and warm weather now!

I have worked so hard on the inside of our house that recently has felt the outdoors needed a little TLC. It’s hard to not forget about your curb appeal when you spend most of your time indoors. Curb appeal is a big deal and I want the outside of our house to be a little bit more charming and nice for someone to walk up to. We have done a couple small projects (okay maybe not so small) since the weather started warming up. My husband built a shed in our backyard. We have also been trying to keep up with the lawn. A couple years ago we moved our garden from one area of our backyard to the other. Unfortunately, we have never planted anything in it. I think we have given up on that idea and that’s okay because neither of us really has a green thumb. Although we may not have a green thumb we do want our lawn to look nice. My husband tends to mow the lawn the majority of the time. I wanted to help with that process this year so I told my husband if we bought a stand-up weeder that I would remove all of the weeds in our yard….which was A LOT! We purchased it and two days later I got to work. It has been quite a job but it’s oddly satisfying. I probably removed at least 500 or more weeds from our front yard. I’ve become a bit obsessed with getting all of the weeds and then getting rid of the new ones that pop up! I can’t recommend this weeder enough, the Fiskers Deluxe Stand-Up Weeder (4-claw). It’s worth every penny!

Okay back to the point of this post….haha! With getting our outdoors ready and more enjoyable I have wanted to hang a porch swing under our deck. A couple years ago we painted our deck and I have wanted to put a swing underneath since then! I have wanted to make a small sitting area so that we could hang out in the shade! I love the outdoors but sometimes the sun is not my friend. I get grumpy when I get too hot! Ha! I found a great deal for a wooden porch swing on Amazon.

Once it arrived I put it together and then primed it with some spray paint. I also used my Ryobi Orbital Sander to sand a few edges of the wood slats. I then let it dry and I used my Super Finish Max Extra paint sprayer from Home Right to paint the swing. I love using a sprayer for this type of project because the sprayer can get paint into all the nooks and crannies. Hand painting a swing like this would take a long time and I painted the whole swing in 10 minutes with the sprayer!

After the swing was finished and dry I hung it up underneath the deck. The previous owners had some hooks already set up underneath the deck. I love that they were there but I do want to move them slightly back and make sure that they are parallel with each other. Right now the swing is slightly crooked. Now that we have our shed and porch swing finished it’s time to finish our little outdoor oasis! I have so many small projects in mind to make our outdoors more fun for entertaining. My girls love to be outside so I want to make this space as enjoyable as possible!

Here is where we are at with our checklist:

Outdoor Oasis Checklist

~~build shed~~
~~hang porch swing~~
~~remove weeds from the yard~~
lay rock underneath the deck
power wash the house
clean windows underneath the deck
touch up deck paint
add outdoor lighting to deck
add a decal to the porch swing
figure out a mural for the back of the shed?

There is a lot more than we want to do but I think this is a good start for this summer! In time we want to extend our deck or build a new one so that we have even more room for entertaining! I’ll keep you posted on the process throughout the summer! Have a wonderful rest of the week!