Patio Woes

Despite having the word “disaster” featured very prominently in our blog title, we not-infrequently receive decorating questions from friends and family who seem not to have noticed that our blog is primarily a vehicle for our deep love of sarcasm and snark.

But constantly working on our own homes can get a little boring sometimes, so even though we try to change it up by providing advice to one another (like what Sage should do with her sunroom, or how Naomi can make some affordable updates to her bathroom), the chance to turn our attention to someone else’s design challenges is always exciting.

Often we weigh in pretty casually (“You should get curtains. Good luck!”), but recently our friend Stephanie asked us for some advice for making over her patio and we thought maybe we’d give it a more serious effort. Fun fact: Stephanie came up with the name “Plaster & Disaster” when we were first thinking of starting this whole blog thing and we just couldn’t come up with a clever title. So it seemed like the least we could do to pay her back with some mood boards and such.

To get us started, we asked Stephanie to describe what she was looking for in her patio makeover. Here’s what she had to say:

I’m really fortunate to have a rather large outdoor space by Boston’s standards. To top it off, my house is on a hill, so the patio it has some great views of the leafy surrounds. Mostly I use the space now for enjoying meals (read: drinking wine) on the small table/chair set on loan from my landlords. Given that I live in a studio apartment and space is a premium inside, it would be great if the patio could also serve as an additional loungey entertaining space as well (so I can finally throw my dream party). I recently desperation-purchased a small loveseat in the hopes of doing some outdoor entertaining, but made no decorating headway because I felt too overwhelmed with options.

Also, no good home makeover would be without a challenge or two (cue my favorite Cosby Show tap dance episode): there’s no outdoor lighting/electrical source so that probably needs to be addressed; Boston’s winters are brutal and snowy, so I need to be able to store cushions indoors in my little studio during the winter; I’d like to use the existing furniture to save my hard-earned gold coins; and my bike needs to be locked outdoors to the railing.

Additionally, Stephanie let us know that her budget was around $200, and she hoped to be able to accomplish the makeover in a few weekends.

Challenge accepted!

Next, we conducted a site visit to see the space in person plus snap some photos for you, dear readers. She wasn’t lying, it’s a really nice big space.

When you walk out of the apartment onto the deck, to your right is this set of stairs. It used to connect to the deck above, which her landlords use, but now it’s sealed off.

To your left is a little seating area, and Stephanie’s bike storage.

And then at the far end is a dining area.

The view from the back is lovely — as Stephanie mentioned, she’s up on a hill so it has a very secluded feel and overlooks this lovely community garden.

Very important for you to see the ceiling, obviously:

And Stephanie uses the space under the stairs for storing outdoor potting and gardening supplies.

Here’s a floorplan of how it all fits together:

Naomi and I took turns snapping photos and trying to convince Stephanie that we had many thoughtful and creative ideas for the space. Apparently we both try to convey “thoughtful contemplation” with the exact same face:

And of course, no site visit would be complete without a super awkward photo shoot of us enjoying the space together, and getting totally blinded by the setting sun.

Oh, and gnomes. Stephanie has gnomes.

Having hopefully convinced Stephanie that we are competent and talented design professionals amateurs who read way too many design blogs, we got to work. Stephanie told us that she loves color, especially blues, reds, greens, yellows, greens…okay, now we’re just listing all the colors. To get a better sense for her style, though, we pulled together a bunch of images into a Pinterest board and asked her to pick some favorites (and note what she liked about them), just to give us a general feel.

She seemed especially drawn to some of the images with cool overhead globe lighting, awesomely-shaped chairs, and mismatched items pulled together with a cohesive and bright color scheme.

With those qualities in mind plus her goals for the space, we started creating a draft floor plan and a list of items that she would need to purchase for the space. We felt like she had the right layout already, with the bistro table and chairs against the back railing and a seating area against the house. Here’s the revised floor plan we worked up, building on what she already had:

The additional purchases this plan called for were:

• Two chairs to put opposite the settee
• A coffee table to put between the settee and new chairs
• A short shelving unit to organize outdoor items under the stairs
• A tall shelving unit to put next to the settee for gnome storage, and to add some color and a cozier feel to the space, with the existing side table she had on the other side of the settee painted to match

Beyond furniture, we knew we also wanted to add some key decor items, including:

• Colorful throw pillows on the settee and new chairs
• Colorful seat cushions on the bistro table chairs that would tie into the color scheme in the seating area
• String lights to drape overhead, and possible additional lighting

We were also drawn to the idea of using draped fabric in some form or another to add more splashes of color everywhere, since the dark wood of the patio is hard to balance out with just a few accessories.

Next it was time to seek out actual products for her to consider. While the budget constraints were tight for the amount of furniture we were recommending, we also didn’t want to suggest that she DIY too much or look patiently on craigslist to nab individual pieces since that would take longer than a few weekends. Instead, we tried to come up with a list of purchases that came from just a few stores, plus a few online sources.

The one exception was an awesome coffee table that Naomi spotted on craigslist and immediately grabbed for just $25:

We’re going to ask you to look past the terrible basement photo and consider the shape and those amazing legs.  We thought it would be so perfect for Stephanie’s space, just the right price point, and would look even better if painted a cheery color or — better yet — decorated with fabric on the top (using Sage’s patented mod podge method).

Anyway, enough about our planning process! Presumably you just want to see what the heck we came up with. First, a mood board:

In addition to the key pieces in the mood board above, we recommended the following items:

• Shelving under the stairs: Room Essentials 3-tier wire shelving (Target, $19.99)
• Chair pads for bistro chairs: Button tufted chair pad (Carol Wright Gifts, $3.99 each) OR Outdoor Foam (Foam Factory, ~$10.50 each)
• Throw pillow inserts: 20×20″ INNER cushion insert (IKEA, $2.99)

And now, some mock-ups of how the patio could actually look with all the elements we’re recommending.  The eating area with new lighting, plants, and bright yellow chair pads:

And the seating area with the bike storage moved, new chairs and furniture, and bright accessories:

Now that the hard part is done, we can sit back and let Stephanie do the easy part of buying, assembling, DIYing, and arranging everything. You’re welcome, Stephanie. You’re welcome.