Refinished Deck Furniture

Now with the deck cleaned, we could get our outdoor furniture back out there. Yes, back out there. Over the summer I have been slowly stripping the wood, then staining and sealing it. I did all of the sanding on the deck, but once each piece was stripped I took it to the garage for refinishing. So the deck has been a bit empty for the last two months.

The furniture came in a honey/reddish tone with beige seat cushions.  Kind of bland and vanilla, but it did look nice when it was dressed up with pillows and throws.

That served us well for a couple of years, but the elements took their toll on the finish and it was starting to peel. The wood that was no longer sealed started to weather in an uneven way, so that we had grey patches mixed with the original honey colour. And a bit of mildew.

I booked a couple of vacation days and got to work removing all of the stain and whatnot. Lucky for me it ended up being two gorgeous days in the high twenties (Celsius) where I could work on my tan while I sanded the heck out of that furniture. I took each piece right down to raw wood. I even discovered that the top of the coffee table was cedar (as I tried unsuccessfully to remove the red tone. Duh!)

Here's my sleepy helper. She's not a fan of the noise. But she matches the Ridgid colours - new mascot perhaps?

Once everything was completely sanded and wiped down, I stained each piece with two coats of Minwax stain in Red Mahogany. Just gorgeous. If these pieces were inside my house I would have just waxed them to a soft glow and let them be, but because they had to withstand our ever-changing weather, I needed to apply polyurethane. Three coats just to be safe.

With all those slats there was a lot of drip-through to the other side. By the time I got to the second piece I'd learned it was best to apply a coat to the underside, flip it over while wet, and then wipe off the drips on the top side. Then when you apply the poly to the top, you can wipe the drips underneath, but if you miss a couple it's no big deal because no one will see them. That's my theory anyway. And if you're that person looking under my furniture: just stop it right now.

Also, you'll get a smoother finish if you sand between coats with the highest grit paper you have. Some people are lucky and don't need to, but working in our garage, which isn't pristine, there were always a few rough spots from dust and/or bubbles. But if you sand after the first and second coats, your third coat should be nice and smooth.

Along with the loveseat, chairs, and coffee table that came in a set, I also refinished the two side tables so that the entire area is cohesive. In fact, they are the same shade as the fold-down bar we made last year. How's that for tying things together? There is a method in my madness.

The contrast between the wood and the cushions is much more noticeable now. It stops those big squares and rectangles of beige from looking blah and invisible. I replaced the green and blue accents from before with brown and orange. Cute little lumbar pillows, right? And it all coordinates with the umbrella now, which was kind of the odd man out before.

I so dig the glossy look of the tables. And I'm not normally a fan of polyurethane - just check out my numerous other posts about waxing refinished furniture for proof. I watched the rain bead on the tabletop the other day and just smiled.

I set up the area with a little impromptu party - pickles, cheese, salami, etc. - and fizzy drinks of course. And then took a million artsy pictures of the glasses.

In fact, I took so long that the other three "people" living in the house decided to start the party without me.

 But they're so cute, how could I be mad?

Cheers!

Deck Cleaning (Algae is Not Your Friend)

Since summer is nearing its end, last weekend we thought we'd do a little deck maintenance. After rebuilding the deck last summer we haven't really looked after it properly, and with a rainy summer like the one we just had, some of the boards were looking a little stained. Especially in the corners. Yuck.

We took ourselves off to Lowe's and bought a bottle of Olympic deck cleaner because we'd heard that it is the one that works. It requires a separate sprayer, but the only one they had in stock was $40 and held 2 gallons. Way more than we needed or were willing to pay. So we just bought a little $10 garden sprayer instead. Problem solved.

We started by clearing everything off the deck and giving it a dry scrub with a hard bristled brush. You can see in the areas by the garden hose and under the chair that algae and mildew have turned the wood green. These are areas that rarely get direct sunlight, so it's tough to dry them out.

Before we started spraying the deck cleaner, we sprayed down the grass surrounding the deck with water to avoid damaging it. We sprayed on the cleaner (which I think is mostly just a strong bleach, though it is biodegradable) and waited for it 10 minutes as directed on the bottle. After giving the worst areas a second spray, we hosed it all down with water and left it to dry. You can see what an improvement it made even with it still a bit wet. Some of the boards still have a bit of a green tinge, but overall it looks so much cleaner! And it feels nicer underfoot.

It rained the next day so we're delayed on sealing it. In fact we haven't had nice enough weather since then (except when we're at work during the week, of course.)

How about a little side-by-side before and after? Quite a difference, isn't it?

We also bought a Big Boss X Hose that I'm sure you've seen on TV. The one that expands when you turn the water on and contracts back when you turn it off. This thing is so great! Look how tiny it is! (Don't worry, that grody little table is hitting the road - it's falling apart all over the place.)

Using the X Hose is so much easier than lugging the regular hose out over and over again. We water the grass every time the dogs pee in an effort to slow down the damage they're doing to the lawn, so the hose gets uncoiled many times a day. Now it just takes a minute or two. And the blue colour is kind of cute. I want to get another one for the front tap now.

Do you have one? What do you think of it?

At-Home Beach Retreat (Vacation Gallery Wall)

This weekend was all about finishing off our half-done projects. While Tom installed a new toilet at his parents' house on Saturday, I finished staining the deck furniture and left it to dry. Then on Sunday we framed and hung some of our favourite vacation pictures in the computer room that was recently painted. (Go here to see the before.)

The computer room is really a multi-purpose room - Tom has his computer there, but there's also a television and a loveseat so other people can hang out with him. And Sasha has claimed the ottoman as her own. That window is her big screen TV.

So why not make it a little more comfortable to hang out in? On one of our last visits to Ikea I bought a bunch of 8x10 Ribba frames, but then I got home and didn't know where to put them. I had considered putting them in the living room, but with the white photo shelves it was just too much white. So they've been packed away for months. But now I had this expanse of blue wall that was looking bare and begging for some accessorizing.

I couldn't decide if I wanted them to hang horizontally or vertically, so I did a little photoshopping. It was just a quick-and-dirty job and nothing is to scale, but it gave me an idea of how it would look. Horizontal definitely looked better.

I went through our vacation photos and picked out the ones with the brightest colours - lots of oranges, reds, and greens, and a few with every colour of the rainbow. The frames come with white matting, but I wanted to tie into the colour of the loveseat and ottoman, so I used tan dropcloth material as additional matting and printed the photos out as 5x7's. Getting dropcloth to lie flat is a chore, people. I ironed that sucker forever and there are still a few wrinkles that I'm just going to have to live with.

To hang them, we found the centre point of the couch and made a mark above it on the wall. Each frame had a piece of paper inside that was almost the same size as the frame so I used those as templates and taped them to the wall to get an idea of spacing. We moved them up and down until we liked what we saw, but it soon became apparent that the wall would look better with eight frames rather than six. So I had to go back and find two more colourful photos that I liked.

Our method of hanging:

The frames are 16¾ inches wide with 3 inches between them, so we measured out 38 inches from the center mark (16¾ x 4 frames plus 3 x 3 spaces, divided by 2) to find the outer edge of the last frame. The first hook then went in 8⅜ inches (half the width of the frame) from that mark (and about 2 inches down from the top). We used WallBiter hooks because we've used them before and they are very strong. To hang the lower hooks, Tom first hung all of the top ones and then measured down from them. The frames are 12¾ inches long with a 3 inch space between them, so he measured down 15¾ inches from the top hook to the spot for the lower one. Once the frames were hung he made slight adjustments to the hanging wire on the back of each frame to get them level.

I pulled some square, white napkins out of my fabric stash and quickly made a couple of throw pillows. I used Polyfill to stuff them so they are nice and squishy. I'd like to find some pillows with blues and greens in them, but until I do I've added a super-soft throw that I found at Goodwill. The white pillows are small so I added the map cushions that I had in the living room (Benzy Land from Ikea but I don't think they have them anymore).

The rest of the room looks like this - we still need something for the wall above Tom's desk. He's thinking maybe a large framed map - possibly an old one of the Hawaiian islands.

The word cozy keeps coming to me whenever I try to describe the room now. I'm so drawn to the beachy look, and this makes me feel like I'm hanging out in my very own cottage.