I was going to wait until the entire deck was finished to show it to you, but due to the weather, it’s taking waaaay longer than we expected.  We’ve had rain almost every day for the last two weeks, and it is supposed to continue until this weekend.

The sky did give us a break yesterday evening, though for a few hours and we got some more railings built and installed.  And now we have 14 of the 16 sections of railing done.

We got to this point when the rain and thunder started rolling in:

So close!  It’s hard to tell, but Hubs is standing on a staircase that goes down to the back yard.  To give you a better idea of the whole-picture, here is the layout of the deck:

We just have 4 small sections of railing, and a gate for the front steps left to build.  It could all be done in an afternoon.

The railings definitely do distract from the view we love so much, but, they also make the deck feel both cozier and larger.  We’re probably going to be spending a lot more time out on the deck this summer since it’s so much more pleasant, so we’re working on a couple ideas to make it even more fun.

I’d love a hanging chair, or 4, but the cost is just not in the budget. 

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After another 12-hour day yesterday, the back section of our deck is finished.  All we have left to do is build the railings (which will be sad, because we’re loving the view without them–but it must be done).

Here is what it looked like Sunday morning:

And this morning:

We enjoyed dinner and wine here last night on the bistro set we borrowed from the front porch.  It was lovely after all that work.

I do have a tip if you are going to do a large project where you will be driving a lot of screws (our deck took 20 pounds of them): buy this tool for your driver.  (That isn’t an ad, but it is an affiliate link, just sharing because it made a huge difference in our project.) We have had it for years, but I was indifferent to it until re-building the deck.  Now I love it.

The black part is a tube that slides down to cover the screw.  Once you put your screw in place, you slip the little cover down over it, and drill.

What it does is ensure that your screw goes in straight (especially helpful when using long screws) and that your driver doesn’t slip off the screw while you’re driving it and put a big gouge in your new deck boards.  I may or may not have done that several times when I wasn’t using the tool.

Now, if we can have a few rain-free evenings this week, we may just be able to get the whole thing finished.  Then we get to the really fun part: decorating.

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After two 12 hour days, the deck is half-way there.  We started Sunday morning with this:

The Hubs pulled up the old boards while I built the railings.  And then we cut, and installed the new boards together.

By the end of the first day, we had this:

And now we have this:

We still have the back section (and a lot more railings) to go:

The forecast is calling for storms today and tomorrow, so we’ll get back to it on Thursday evening.  And we are not complaining about the forced break either, our muscles will seriously enjoy the recovery time.

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I haven’t shown you much of our deck or back yard.  Because it’s a little embarrassing.

The deck and yard were two of our favorite things about this house before purchasing it.  The deck is pretty large.  In fact, at 600 square feet, it’s larger than my first apartment was.  As a friend said, we “bought a deck with a house attached.”

Once we moved in and the snow melted, the deck had to be re-painted.

I painted every single one of those spindles.  With a brush.  It took forever.  But it looked so pretty!

This was in early spring, and by that summer, it was all peeling up…badly.  As you can imagine, I had no desire to do all that again (especially if it was only going to last a few months), so it’s been peeling up ever since.  But as it turns out, the deck boards are at the end of their life expectancy anyway and they’re all beginning to rot.

Here’s what it looks like today.

Nasty, huh?  This is why you haven’t seen it.

So, I bet you can guess what we’re doing this weekend!  Or beginning to do this weekend anyway…it will probably take longer than that to rebuild the whole deck.  Of course, I will keep you updated on our newest project.

The post Maintenance (The deck’s “before” photos) appeared first on Little Victorian.

Yesterday, we ended up having a bag of concrete left over from a big project we’re doing (more on that in a later post).  We also had an umbrella clothesline on our deck since last fall which was still in it’s package.

It was still in the package because we needed an umbrella stand to put it in.  But having a left over bag of concrete gave us a better idea.

Since I kill all plants I try to grow don’t have a green thumb, we will not be attempting container gardens again this year.  So we took one of our 8 gallon pots with wheels, filled it with concrete and stuck the clothesline in it.

We think it’s way cuter in a pot than in an umbrella base.

(And wow, does our deck need to be refinished.  We thought it was bad in person, but it always looks so much worse in photos.)  (Update: It needed way more than re-finishing…we had to completely replace it.)

For now the top is filled with river rocks to cover the concrete.  I’m thinking there might be something cuter I can do with it though.  Any ideas?

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The front porch makeover is finished!  There are a few little projects left, but it’s finished enough to show you pictures.  This time I’ll start with the “After.”

Here’s the listing photo from when we purchased the house:

It was slightly different than this when we actually purchased it.  The big Maple in the front was cut down (and a lovely stump left a foot above the ground) and the Spruce that was overtaking the front porch was gone too.

We tossed the storm door.  We wanted so badly to keep the gorgeous original front door, but it was warped beyond repair.  For the first 6 months or so, we couldn’t just close the door, we had to slam it.  Hard.  Then lock it to get it to stay shut.  The neighbors probably thought we were just angry people.

After giving the siding a good cleaning, here’s what we did:

• Added house numbers to the front door
• Painted the bistro set green
• Made a rug out of a drop cloth and painted it
• In the flower bed, we put down weed barrier, mulch and potted plants and flowers
• Added topiaries on either side of the front door and more potted plants in various places
• Lined the flower bed with stones from the rocky back yard
• Added inexpensive solar path lights and string lights

And here’s the transformation:

It was a lot of work, but we had fun, but we are sooo glad it’s done.  This week, we’re moving on to my office and our electrical dilemmas.

What did you work on this weekend?

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On Monday, I wrote about how to DIY a self-watering planter.  Wednesday, I remembered that, after making several of the planters last year, we tweaked the plans a bit from the Root Simple method.  Their method was to use two pots (or buckets in their case) nested, instead of a saucer.  We liked the saucer better because it was way cheaper and two nesting pots looked a little funny.  Like this:

Here is the ready made self-watering planter that we purchased from IKEA.  The price was good, but the style doesn’t fit in so well on our deck, and they don’t hold as much water or wick the water up as well as the home made planters.

(The strawberry bush that didn’t give me a single strawberry last year is back and blooming!  Total surprise.  Now I just have to harvest them before the birds do.  Unlike my sad attempt at a blueberry bush last year.)

Here is a better looking self-watering planter that we did, our little herb garden in an urn:

So there are lots of options for a self-watering planter.  All of them are pretty simple and very inexpensive.  And they give even the most horrendous plant killer like me a fighting chance.

I need to go get the finishing touches on the Mother’s Day gifts done and get them in the mail, already.  Ack, hopefully the mothers will still get them in time.

Helpful? Yay! Pin it to come back.

Hover over the image –> and click the PIN button.

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As much as I looove Ikea, I don’t love when you walk into a room (or drive down a street) and can easily say “Oh, that’s from Ikea” about something you’re seeing.We have had their super-affordable, cute and versatile Tarno bistro set for a couple years now and we love it.  The set of table and two chairs only cost $50 total in the first place, so it’s a steal.  But, we were ready for a change.  All I saw when I looked at them was “Ikea!”  We like the Ikea Tarno painted so much better than the raw wood-look.

So, as you’ve seen, here is the set before I painted it:

It’s a terrible photo, sorry.  I assumed that I had lots of good “before” photos before I started painting.  Well, I didn’t…

Here it is now:

It’s pretty cool how much more modern and fresh it looks.  All it took was sanding, painting and sealing.  So easy.

Here’s how I recommend painting the Ikea Tarno:

1. Give it a light sanding, whether it’s new or you’ve had it a couple years like us.
2. Wipe it down with a damp lint-free cloth.  (We LOVE these towels and use them for this, and so many other things around the house).
3. If you want it to last a long time, put a coat of primer on it.  Or if you’re like me and always too impatient excited, go straight to painting.
4. Paint the insides and ends of the wood slats with a brush.  Then roll the paint on the surface with a small foam roller.
   Regarding which paint to use: I had leftover interior paint in this mint color, so I used that and then followed it up with a coat of sealer so the paint didn’t peel off.  If you use exterior paint, you won’t need to do seal it.
5. Celebrate how easy it was to make such a big difference.

I was actually nervous before painting and almost backed out a few times.  I had no idea what to expect with just the wood being painted.  I was afraid it might be way too feminine and cute, but it was way more modern-looking than I imagined.  We’re so happy with the way it looks painted.  Hopefully this weekend we’ll have the porch a lot more finished.

P.S. I will be back tomorrow for a rare Thursday post with a few more notes on and photos of our other self-watering planters.

Update: Click the picture to see the finished front-porch.

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Last spring, we learned how to make a self-watering planter from Root Simple.  Their tutorial is great, but it’s pretty ugly.  We didn’t want 5-gallon buckets sitting on our deck, so we figured out how to make our own pretty self-watering planters out of ANY pot.

It was pretty easy AND cost under $20 for a 3 gallon-sized planter.  They are really handy during summer travel or just for people like me, who forget to water.  You can buy self-watering planters already made, but they cost quite a bit and they really don’t work as well as the homemade version.  So, we tossed around some ideas and came up with this.  Here it is:

Supplies you need to make a self-watering planter (from any pot):

All you need is:

• A planter (with no drain hole in the bottom), like this, or this pretty one.
• A plastic planter saucer (a sturdy one like this

  

  , not the flimsy 50 cent version)
• An empty plastic one or two-liter bottle
• A length of PVC, about 2 feet
• A drill (our favorite that has lasted us over 5 years of remodeling)
• A hand saw (just a simple one, or whatever else you have that will cut plastic)
• Potting soil and plants
• And a helper is always handy:

Yes…a human helper is a little handier, but I’ll take what I can get, especially with that face.

(Some of the links above are affiliate links, which help support Little Victorian at no cost to you.)

The general idea is this: the saucer will go inside the planter to create an upper and lower section inside your planter.  The lower section will be your water reserve, and the soil and plant will sit on top.  To get the water to the bottom, we’ll insert a watering tube through the saucer.  To get the water to slowly wick back up into the soil and plant roots, we’ll insert a cup (or cut off bottle) with holes in it, into the center of the saucer.  This bottle will be filled with soil and absorb the water from the lower section as the plant needs it.  K?  It’ll make sense when you see the pictures.

The tutorial is for a 3-gallon planter, so if you use a different size, adjust everything accordingly.

Test the size of the saucer before you buy it, it should fit into the planter and hold itself up about 2 to 4 inches from the bottom of the bottom of the planter.  Depending on the size of the saucer, you may need to turn it up-side-down to have enough space for the water, like this:

1. Prepare your wicking bottle.

This is the bottle that is going to sit on the bottom of the planter and act as a wicking device to get the water to the soil.  Drill lots of holes (around 5/8ths of an inch is good) in the bottom half of the bottle.  (This is a 1.5 liter bottle–bigger than it looks in the picture.)

2. Cut a hole in the center of your saucer, just large enough for the bottle to fit through.

3. Cut the bottle so it will sit flush with the saucer.

Place the saucer and bottle into the planter.  Press the saucer and bottle down as far as they will go.  Mark your bottle just above the rim of the saucer, then take the bottle and saucer back out and cut the top of the bottle off along that line.

4. Prepare your watering tube.

Place your pipe on the saucer (anywhere between the bottle hole and the edge will work), and trace it.  Cut out the hole you just drew.

5. Adjust the height of your watering tube.

Place the pipe inside your planter and look at how tall it is.  You don’t want it to stand too far out of the soil and look like you planted an ugly PVC pipe.  You only need it to be 2 or 3 inches above the soil line, so mark that spot and cut down your pipe as needed.

Place the saucer back in the planter.  Insert the plastic bottle and the watering pipe.

Almost done!

6. Add a drain hole to your new self-watering planter.

You can either measure or eyeball it, but the drain hole should go through the planter and be just under the base of the saucer.  This will do two things: keep the soil from holding too much moisture and it will let you know when you are done watering by spurting water out the side when it’s full.

7. Carefully start filling your planter with potting soil.

Use a little scoop or cup at first.  Make sure that the plastic bottle wick is filled first, then load up the pot.  As you are filling the pot, pull the top of your watering tube towards the edge of the planter so that it sits at an angle.  (This will make for easier filling and it will ensure that the water can escape at the bottom and you aren’t just fruitlessly filling the tube with water and not the pot.)

You’re done!  Plant away!  And load it up with water.  (At the initial planting, you should also water the top like a traditional planter, but for the rest of the season, you’ll only need to water through the pipe unless the top gets really dry.)

You are now free to go water your plants and forget about them for a week.  Have fun and let me know how it goes if you tackle the project yourself.

Update: Another post with more self-watering planter options is here.

Here are links to some of the supplies through Amazon:

Pin it to save it for later!

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Yesterday was such a beautiful day!  Our lovely neighbors took us out fishing in the bay yesterday and it was so much fun.  It finally gave me spring fever (a little late, huh?).  Since we’re at a stand-still in my office, I’ve decided to move on to the front porch.

It’s a disaster right now.  Here is the general idea I hope to achieve out there while it’s still spring:

The floor and ceiling are already painted a grayed blue, my favorite color.  My color inspiration came from the hydrangea we have in the flower bed in front of the porch.  Hydrangeas have always been my favorite, and this one is the best ever.  It starts bright blue, then goes muted blue, leading to muted green, then bright green.  (And usually purple and pink before fall.)

The colors of the rug in the mood board are just a little brighter than I plan on going with.  I’m hoping to paint a plain rug myself so I have more control over it, and save money.  We already have the bistro set, I’m thinking of painting or staining the wood a muted green.  We have both of the urns as well, just need to paint them both the same color and get some topiaries (hopefully some good fakes, since I am the killer of everything green).

Here is our current eyesore.  Our poor neighbors…

That flower bed makes me cringe.  Last year, we were out there at least twice a week trying to pull out the Bermuda grass and weeds.  We just can’t keep them out.  There is actually an Azalea under that mass of weeds.  We lost one last year in spite of our best efforts.  This year, we hope to pull that poor one out, lay down many layers of weed barrier and just do potted flowers and plants inside the flower bed. 

I’d also like to stain that icky concrete pad the same color as the porch floor.  (The hydrangea is just outside the picture to the left.)

The tattered chair was a curbside snatch.  I thought I could try to fix it up and if it didn’t work, I’d just stick it back onto the curb!

Still can’t figure out where to put the house numbers though.  Thinking maybe something like this?

100kMom

Or this?  Of course, it would be in plain colors for us.  What do you think?

Positively Splendid

First up is the un-fun stuff though, power washing and fixing the flower bed.  After that I’ll be posting the painting and refinishing projects! 

The stuff in the mood board came from:
* Rug and chair: Pier 1
* Potted plants pic: RealSimple
* Bistro set (recolored photo): This Old House
* Pillow: World Market

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