Adding a Little Green to My Life

Adding a Little Green to My Life

It all started this winter when I got cabin fever.  During the cold season (even with this year’s mild weather). I start dreaming of Spring and getting outside. Daydreaming about what I am going to plant in the garden and how I want to change it up.

I visited my local Habitat for Humanity Restore with a friend and came upon these great outdoor chair cushions. Here they are all packed away in my basement.

What a deal! $20 for 5 chair seat cushions, 5 chair back cushions, and 2 love seat cushions.  Even though I have 6 chairs I am going to make it work. I couldn’t beat the price and the size, so I scooped them up. Thus began my back porch spruce up.

Here are some photos of my furniture on the porch. Everything is brown, so I knew that needed changing as well.

I also needed a smaller table for the space. We have a rectangular, glass-top table, but the porch is a little small once all the furniture is in. My immediate family includes four people, so a smaller table would work for us and give us more room to move into the space. It also meant that we would need only 4 or 5 chairs, thus fixing the odd number of cushions issue.

Back to Habitat for Humanity Restore!

I found a round oak table that was perfect! Well not really. Perfect for the space, but the top was in pretty bad shape. That’s why it was only $25. We brought it home and the painting project began.

First, repairs on the tabletop meant sanding it down and patching the most damaged spots. It’s not pretty, but I was going to paint the table anyway.

Here’s where the “green” comes in. I wanted to add more color to the back porch with the table. So I decided to paint the table the same green color that was in the seat cushions. I also wanted to rough it up a little. We are not formal people.  Since it’s on the back porch in the summer humidity I was looking for a more casual look. After several layers of paint, we sanded it down to the look we wanted. We poly-ed it for some protection from the elements.

I think it turned out great!

One more quick project to add interest:

How to make a floorcloth out of a tablecloth. I found this inspiration on Pinterest.

And at my local Home Goods, I found a great round tablecloth that coordinates with the new seat cushions.

Completion of this project is very soon!

Coming up…Our biggest project.  The re-screening of the porch. Late last season, a mysterious long rip appeared in the middle of one of the screen sections – Maybe a squirrel or bird, but maybe a ball or rock too. I’ll never know. The men in my life will take care of that soon, along with the porch cleanup that we do every year.

I can’t wait to have it all done. It will mark the beginning of the outdoor season for me. I’ll post the final photos, once it’s all done. Happy Spring.

What are you doing to celebrate the season? Are you adding a Little Green too?