Observations Of An Amateur Housewife

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Springy Stuff

We've had a gorgeous Spring this year. Lots of rain, but not an unbearable amount like previous years. After 7 years of little to no yard, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate having a pretty backyard for my kids to play in!!! I love to go sit out on the porch and watch them play. Jackson gathers me beautiful little weed bouquets, Lily runs around trying to catch butterflies, Max bounces in the exersaucer, the birds sing, the grass grows, the ice melts in my glass...you get the idea. Life is good. :)

The porch does need a little TLC, so I'm excited to have a project to work on this summer while we're outside.
 I started a couple of weeks ago, by painting our existing outdoor furniture. By furniture I mean plastic chairs we've picked up at yard sales. We also had a small round table and chairs that aren't technically outdoor furniture, but I figured with paint and some good coats of sealant they'd work. I wanted something bright and fun, and decided on a color palette of Leafy Green, Black, White and a little Fuchsia. The fuchsia is really an afterthought, after finding these gorgeous fuchsia peonies blooming in the yard yesterday. 






So far, all I've done is spray paint the chairs and table. The chairs were painted with Rustoleum Satin paint in "Eden". Each chair took approx. 15 minutes, and 1 1/2 cans of paint, give or take. I also ended up looking like Shrek by the time I was done.  (And may I also just say right now how incredibly ANNOYING it is to try and format the images into these blogger blog posts????)

Anyway. I LOVE the color. You can't quite tell in the pics, but it is the exact shade of the leaves on the trees. 
The table and a loveseat type bench were sprayed black. I sprayed several coats of lacquer on the wood furniture, and to be honest, I'm not crazy how that turned out. Its fine on everything but the black tabletop. It came out all blotchy and uneven. See how it looks kind of wet in the last picture? It isn't supposed to look like that. :/   I'm going to have to brush on regular lacquer to make it look nice. Other than that, I'm very happy with it. At any rate, its much more fun to sit in and look at now! I plan on sewing chair pads and a few throw pillows out of this black and white damask fabric,
and somehow working in the fuchsia color...maybe with piping or something, I don't know.


Next up: fix the splotchy table top, make cushions, paint the porch white,  and put in new screens!


 I'll be posting pics when its all done. In my imagination, it looks awesome. We'll see. And hopefully it won't take all summer. :)


4 comments:

  1. What a fun summer project! It's going to look great with the white! =)

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  2. Love the progress so far! It's gonna look amazing! :)

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  3. Aww I like the first flower picture. =)

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