It’s been a while since I’ve posted over here, considering last time I posted we had a couple inches of snow on the ground! These days, we’ve been hovering in the high 70s and sunshine, which is WAY more my speed. I’ve been waiting for these days to come! With the combination of pretty weather and a countdown of SEVEN weeks until our wedding, the house projects have been picking up!
I have so much to catch you up on! First thing up is the side yard. No joke, we had no idea that our side yard even existed when Elijah bought the house. It was so overgrown that we couldn’t see how far the fence was from the house! It was a pleasant surprise. Once we cleared it out, I could quickly tell that it would become one of my favorite spaces. Sure enough, I think it’s already won. As we wrap up each project, the vision is slowly coming to life before our eyes!
Before Pictures
A few days ago while we were working, I decided to search for a before picture of the side yard to see the difference. Oh my. That’s all I can say…scroll down to see…
(If you want to see an entire post with before pictures of the house, check out this post!)
We’ve come a ways since then! ^^
Outdoor Dinner Table
Do you remember the free kitchen table we found on the side of the road? Well, we ended up receiving another beautiful table, so we decided to move our free table outside! With a coat of Kilz Interior/Exterior Primer and 2 fresh coats of exterior green paint (inspired by my mom’s rain boot color), it is the perfect outdoor table! I used Jade Romanesque by Benjamin Moore.
Garden Bed
Next, we added our first garden bed along the fence. When we cleared out our driveway this summer, we uncovered all of these rocks! I knew I wanted to incorporate them somewhere, and they turned out to be the perfect liner for our garden bed.
On Instagram, we shared some process pictures creating our garden bed, and had a few people ask why we had boxes laying everywhere. Since we were starting from scratch, we covered the ground in cardboard boxes to kill the weeds & grass. It makes a great layer to cover with 3-4 inches of mulch.
I can’t wait to start filling this bed with plants!
Outdoor Metal Chairs
For the chairs, I was hoping to wait & thrift them or score some super good deal on them at a yard sale– ha! However, I really just wanted to go ahead and get this space ready, so I hopped online and ordered 8 up! Plus, I have always loved the look of classic metal outdoor chairs like these. We got ours on Walmart.com at this link in the color gray, but it looks like they are out of our color already. Honestly, we think they may have accidentally sent us the “gun” color, since they look so different than the pictures online? Regardless, we were super pleased with the color, quality, size, & all! We also found some good-looking similar chairs on Amazon here.
Double Gate
Our most recent addition to the side yard is our double gate! When we first envisioned a plan for the side yard, we wanted it to be welcoming more than anything. What’s more welcoming than a wide open double gate?! I had been dreaming of these for a while, and I’m not kidding when I say I walked in the house to work on some things & walked back out 45 minutes later to a finished gate built by Elijah. I can’t believe how beautiful they turned out!
A few months back, Elijah built the fence around our entire backyard, and we had been waiting for the wood to dry out to stain it. It was finally ready. A few days ago, both my sisters came to the house in their paint clothes, grabbed a roller, and started staining away! With those girls, we got our fence stained black in no time! Once the gates dry, we’ll be staining those black too!
If you’ve been following along for a bit, you’ll know by now that my favorite table centerpieces are always clippings from the backyard. I can’t WAIT to create more centerpieces for time spent around this table!
Future Plans
We aren’t done yet with this space! We have a few more plans. Next, we want to hang solar powered lights overhead to add a fun ambiance and encourage late-night lingering outside.
Also, if you notice that one random concrete paver under the wicker basket, we are getting 24 of those squares to create a patio feel under the table and chairs- and to keep Elijah from wanting to pull his hair out when he mows!
We also want to add a shelf to the kitchen sink window to be able to pass food outside for dinners & such. I came across this one below on Instagram & loved the idea of cutting a hole for a pot filled with lavender, isn’t it dreamy?!
The dreaming never stops over here…!
I’m hoping to head back to the house today to get some more pictures of other projects we’ve been working on! We just added 3 framed chalkboards to our front porch, so stay tuned for a blog post about those! I also might be staining our daybed swing today….hmm…so many fun projects!
Hope you’re getting to soak in some sunshine wherever you are today! Thanks for reading!
Daisy Sue
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