Monday, August 24, 2009
A New View!
Maybe you've already had a peek at this via my Flickr stream, as I've had some photos hanging around there for a couple of weeks with the intention of getting a detailed DIY run-down written and posted. At the rate time has been flying around here, however, it'll be winter before I get around to that, so I'm giving you the happy finished product post first, instead.
While summer is still in full swing... a couple of views of our almost complete "new" outdoor room!!
from above:
The biggest and most time-consuming portion of the new room was that red thing, aka the shade sail that I designed and fabricated myself and installed with the help of Boy. It's something that had been on our to-do list since we've moved in so I'm thrilled with a capital T that it's finally done. It wasn't easy or quick, but if I had known what a transformation this one simple thing would give us, it would have happened two years ago.
We went from a hot, bland and boring concrete patio to an actual outdoor room that we are LOVING getting to hang out in, and just in time, since we're out there more than ever now that the wood fired oven is functional. Even better, it's helping to shade the interior of the house and keeping us (mostly) happily A/C-free for yet another summer.
If you haven't seen them already, check out my in-progress pictures of theDIY shade sail project on Flickr. And yes, I still hope to give you all the down and dirty on making your own shade sail in a bit.
Doesn't it make you want to come right over for a mojito? Bring your favorite toppings and I'll make you a pizza!
The rugs are by Koko from outdoorrugs.com because they were priced right and darn cute. I was also oogling the lovely outdoor line by Dash and Albert which are GORGEOUS in person but alas, my patio is large and the two rugs I would have needed were more than I wanted to spend at this point.
My next project for the space is going to be some prep tables for the cooking area and different patio furniture, and my plan is to leverage the awesomeness that is IKEA once again but using their UTBY line of stainess table bases and legs with some more DIY concrete tops. Because I haven't spent enough time screwing around with concrete yet this summer. And because modern patio furniture costs a mint that I don't feel like spending. Definitely more to come on that project soon.
So now that the lower patio is becoming something, I've been inspired to start working on the lower roof deck area as well. It's another hot, boring space that I've always had a vision for but have yet to get to work on. It'll mean making another shade sail which I'm not exactly looking forward to, but because the impact-to-effort ratio is fairly high, I think I can suck it up one more time to do battle with another 400 square feet of unruly fabric.
While summer is still in full swing... a couple of views of our almost complete "new" outdoor room!!
from above:
The biggest and most time-consuming portion of the new room was that red thing, aka the shade sail that I designed and fabricated myself and installed with the help of Boy. It's something that had been on our to-do list since we've moved in so I'm thrilled with a capital T that it's finally done. It wasn't easy or quick, but if I had known what a transformation this one simple thing would give us, it would have happened two years ago.
We went from a hot, bland and boring concrete patio to an actual outdoor room that we are LOVING getting to hang out in, and just in time, since we're out there more than ever now that the wood fired oven is functional. Even better, it's helping to shade the interior of the house and keeping us (mostly) happily A/C-free for yet another summer.
If you haven't seen them already, check out my in-progress pictures of theDIY shade sail project on Flickr. And yes, I still hope to give you all the down and dirty on making your own shade sail in a bit.
Doesn't it make you want to come right over for a mojito? Bring your favorite toppings and I'll make you a pizza!
The rugs are by Koko from outdoorrugs.com because they were priced right and darn cute. I was also oogling the lovely outdoor line by Dash and Albert which are GORGEOUS in person but alas, my patio is large and the two rugs I would have needed were more than I wanted to spend at this point.
My next project for the space is going to be some prep tables for the cooking area and different patio furniture, and my plan is to leverage the awesomeness that is IKEA once again but using their UTBY line of stainess table bases and legs with some more DIY concrete tops. Because I haven't spent enough time screwing around with concrete yet this summer. And because modern patio furniture costs a mint that I don't feel like spending. Definitely more to come on that project soon.
So now that the lower patio is becoming something, I've been inspired to start working on the lower roof deck area as well. It's another hot, boring space that I've always had a vision for but have yet to get to work on. It'll mean making another shade sail which I'm not exactly looking forward to, but because the impact-to-effort ratio is fairly high, I think I can suck it up one more time to do battle with another 400 square feet of unruly fabric.
Labels: shade sail patio outdoor
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Wow! It looks great and I'm so impressed that you tackled that great big pile of unruly fabric - I refuse to even sew basic long curtains due the sheer annoyance of dealing with large rectangles of fabric and trying to keep them as rectangles instead of irregular polygons.
What kind of fabric did you use and where did you get it? My husband and I wanted to make a shade sail but the only fabric I could find locally was boat canvas which was really thick. I didn't think my poor sewing machine would be able to handle it. IKEA was selling a shade sail this past summer, but by the time I was able to get to an IKEA store (there aren't any here in Colorado), they were sold out. Your patio looks great! Jean
# posted by 
: 11:19 PM
: 11:19 PM
Like I said, I do intend to do a DIY rundown with sources, etc. in a bit. I made it from Coolaroo fabric which is for shadesails specifically, although I also considered Sunbrella. The IKEA ones are WAY too small, for my purposes at least, and the fabric they're made from isn't great.
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