The summer months are coming up and since the foyer is now officially under our belts, we’re now moving on to the other “entry” of our house: the carport. This is where we go in and out everyday, and since we bought the house, we’ve parked our car in there a total of three times – and I think that was during Irene and Sandy. Actually, a while back, we gave our patio furniture a mini facelift and semi-DIYed a huge console table for the space to make it more of an outdoor living slash entry area.

It’s pretty much a blank canvas, but if you look a little closer, you’ll see a few major things we need to address before we get to the fun decorating stuff…

Project #1: The ceiling. As you can see from the photo above, the ceiling is in pretty bad shape. The paint, which was once white (probably back in the 70′s!) is now a sickly-looking yellow, dirty and peeling like crazy. Then there are the lights, which have seen their better days. Project#2: The floor. The previous owners used the carport as, well, a carport, so there are a lot of grease and oil stains from years of car-parking. I also may or may not have spilled a cup of stain on the floor when we were working on a project. Go me. Project #3: The handrails. The simplest project of them all, they just need a quick sanding and a fresh coat of black paint to bring them back to life.

Once we get all of those things under our belt over the next few weeks, we’re teaming up with Target (which happens to be our favorite place on Earth, right after Disney World) to bring some color, comfort and fun to the space. So. Excited. Here’s the plan…

ONE // Like we mentioned earlier, the ceiling is in bad shape. Structurally speaking, it’s fine – it just needs a major facelift. We’re currently weighing the options of scraping, priming and re-painting as opposed to going a step further and cover it up a treatment of some sort such as planks of medium/dark stained wood. Either way, it will look a lot better than what’s going on now.

TWO // Once the ceiling is finished, we’re going to move on to the floor. We’re still debating on whether to paint it or do the whole epoxy/paint treatment (anyone have any experience with this?). Either way, all of the nastiness is going to get covered up with a neutral shade of gray – similar to brand spanking new concrete.

THREE // Throw up some globe string lights and you have yourself an instant party. Aside from replacing the two overhead lights (we’re thinking something silver to pop against the medium/dark planks), we’re going to line the perimeter of the carport with some fun string lights. We actually hung some a few months ago but never blogged about it because the ceiling is just too plain ugly (you can see them in the before photo at the top of this post). This time around, my dad, who’s a licensed electrician, is going to help us install an outlet in the ceiling so we don’t have an extension cord running down the corner next to the door. Yay for dads!

FOUR // New patio furniture isn’t in the budget for this project, but we’re totally in love with Target’s Belvedere Conversation Set. The furniture we have is the same size and color, so we’re going to soften it up with pillows and accessories and try our best to make a cozy and inviting conversation area.

FIVE // I am in love with these Threshold Metal Lanterns. When I picked them up in the store, I was so surprised at how heavy and well-made they were. A few of these on the console table with some flameless candles will add some nice ambiance to the area.

SIX // A part of making a cozy conversation area (as mentioned in #4) is making things as comfortable as possible. We’re going to add at least five outdoor pillows to the furniture. I’m particularly loving these, these and these. Ahh, can’t get enough pillows.

SEVEN // I love, love, love to entertain and having friends over to just hang out. So, when everything is all spruced up, we’re going to be throwing a summer kick-off get-together out on our new “carport patio”. Can. Not. Wait. Everything tastes better in a mason jar – especially during the summer – and I love the relaxed casual look of using mason jars as drinking glasses at a party. So, that’s what we’ll be doing.

EIGHT // I’ve said it a bajillion times, but I love using all white dishes when we entertain. You can add color by mixing in whatever combo you want with special dishes (trays, serving bowls, etc) and colorful linens. For this shindig, I’m going to use this awesome Threshold platter as my “inspiration piece” and will be including corals, reds and a few pops of yellow.

NINE // For our summer kick-off get-together, we’re teaming with fellow Target Inner Circle Member and food blog extraordinaire, Gina, from SkinnyTaste. She creates the most delicious skinny recipes that totally don’t taste like “diet food”. Around here, we’re big fans of her Grilled Chicken with Spinach and Melted Mozzarella and Mexican “Unfried” Ice Cream. She’s pretty awesome. She’ll be putting together a healthy, fresh menu for our get together, and I can’t wait to hear what she has in mind. Plus, it will be a load of pressure taken off of us not to have to spend time figuring out the menu when we can be decorating, haha.

So there you have it, our grand plan. It seems like everyone in Blogland is sprucing up the outside of their houses. How about you, are you getting ready for summer too?

You guys remember me talking about our “lovely” patio furniture in this post, right?…

…Well, it’s about to get a serious facelift! We’ve had this set since we lived in our apartment. Down the road, we’d like to get a new set of outdoor furniture (maybe something like this), but until then, we decided to spruce up what we have. The set has held up really, really well and is still like brand new! On the other hand, the orangey-beige wasn’t working for us and definitely not getting along with our bricks. So, it needed a facelift. Badly!

For this transformation, we turned to our favorite tool and the easiest and fastest way to transform virtually anything… spray paint! The patio furniture is made out of plastic-ish resin that looks and feels a ton like wicker. We wanted to make sure the paint would adhere to the wanna-be-wicker surface, so we chose Rust-Oleum’s Ultra Cover Primer to get things started. The can says it covers plastic and wicker, so we were in good shape. As for the top coat/color, we went with Rust-Oleum’s Painter’s Touch in Satin Espresso. Both the primer and the paint cans say one can equals two. Knowing that we have a lot of “wicker” to spray paint, we had hopes of this feature helping us out in the long run.

First, we removed dust, dirt and any various “outdoor residue” from the furniture by spraying it down with the water hose and dried them off with a “project towel”. Once everything was dry, it was time for primer! The primer went on really well and took a lot less time than we expected (yay for time savers!). Almost two cans later, the furniture was all primed! We let it dry for about an hour and moved on to the Espresso.

Now, this step seemed like it took foooooorever. The wicker-esque furniture has a bajillion tiny grooves and crevices that can be seen from pretty much any angle. Just when you think you have a piece finished, you look at it from another angle and you see a sea of the original orangey-beige. Now and then, we had to just step away from it for a few minutes to get a different perspective – and to give our hands a rest. When it was all said and done, we emptied 5 cans of spray paint. Good thing this paint has double coverage, right?

About an hour after the last coat, the furniture was dry enough to handle – but still not quite dry enough to sit on. I couldn’t resist bringing all the pieces over their new resting place in the carport. We played around with a few arrangements but kept on coming back to having the love seat centered on the fireplace wall facing the two chairs and side table with the coffee table in the middle. Truth be told, I’ll probably switch it up about a hundred times before we’re ready to style and prettify everything. Ahh, I can’t wait to get some color in here!!!

Did you notice the new outdoor rug? We picked up this 8′x11′ bad boy at Target (this one). I really like how it’s neutral enough to go with pretty much any style and blends in nicely with the concrete floors (which we’re plaining on refinishing a little later down the road) without being too “bam! in your face”. Though the color is great, the selling point (for me) was the herringbone detail on the edges making the rug a perfect marriage of modern and neutral. The rug immediately helped break up the sea of concrete and defined a designated seating area. It still has some waves in it here and there from being rolled up in the store for so long, but those will fall out within time.

Oh, while we’re talking about the great outdoors, we upgraded our water hose with this fancy shamcy one from Home Goods (for only $12!) and also installed a new hose holder from Lowe’s (this one). Now we just need to do something this that big ugly box known as the air conditioner. Yeah, I can’t live without it, but it sure is ugly to look at. It’s a pretty old unit, yet still works really well, but when it dies and goes to Air Conditioner Heaven, we’re going to install the new one on the side of the house where it can’t be seen from the patio.

So, Phase 2 of the patio makeover is now complete! We’re one step closer to enjoying the upcoming Virginia fall weather out in the new carport turned patio. On to Phase 3! …not completely sure what’s next up on our list, but excited to get started nonetheless.

As Ash mentioned in this post, since we rarely (if ever) park our car in the carport, we’re now in the process of turning the carport into a covered patio of sorts. One of the first projects on our list was to find a table to use as an “outdoor entry table”. Ideally, this table would not only be nice on the eyes but a functional project table as well as a buffet for entertaining outside.

While driving down the back roads of Hanover, Ashley and one of our good friends happened upon a random middle-of-the-week yard sale where a man was selling a bunch of tools and boating equipment. What caught Ashley’s eye was this huge work bench, complete with a steel cover on the top with an attached vice for $20. Not only was it clearly a work bench, it was a bit worse for wear. The vice was pretty rusted and the steel top was in even worse condition. The rest of the table was all sorts of different colors (in a bad way). Of course, Ashley, being the DIY optimist, went ahead and bought it, knowing whole-heartedly we could restore it back to its former glory – well, a new kind of glory. She and our friend lifted the 100+ pound table into the back of the SUV and away they went. As Ash put it, “It was a beast!”

When she got this massive table home, I’m sure she could read the doubt all over my face. The first thing we decided to do was take the vice off (which is why it isn’t in the photo above). We both agreed it was too rusted for us to do anything with, so we decided to sell it. Much to our surprise, someone offered $30. We took them up on the offer seeing as how it was more than what we paid for the table! At this point, Ashley was feeling pretty proud of herself!

While we liked the idea of having a metal table top, it was really rusted and rotted. After a lot of going back and forth, we finally deemed it unusable and took it to the dump. Luckily, underneath the metal were wide planks of wood in pretty good condition.

You can’t really tell much in the photos, but the table was filthy! It had been used somewhere with lots and lots of motor oil. So, we decided to pressure-wash the table to try to remove as much grime and grease as possible. The pressure-washing action completely changed the color of the wood (more so in person) and brought us to a nice “starting point” to work with. NOW I was seeing the potential Ash was all excited about. Once the table was all cleaned up and the top removed, here’s what “the beast” was looking like…

Unlike the rest of the table, which is made of extremely solid pine, the shelf on the bottom was made of cheap particle board. Since it was still in good structural order, we decided to leave the particle board there and cover it with wood planks. Lucky for us, we happened upon exactly what we needed: wood shipping pallets. Yet again, another on-the-side-of-the-road find.

I took the pallets apart (it took the majority of two and a half pallets), pieced the planks together like a puzzle one by one, screwed them into the plywood then trimmed the edges with my circular saw. After was all said and done, it turned out pretty well!

Here’s another close-up of the planks on the bottom shelf…

After the planks were installed, I sanded the whole table… by hand. Now I’ve never been much of a woodworker, but even this simple of a design took a LOT of elbow grease to sand by hand. My father-in-law offered his vibrating sander, but I decided I just had to put my own sweat into this table. Plus, I thought sanding it by hand and purposely doing it uneven here and there might make it look a bit rustic – in a good way.

To tie in with our soon-to-be espresso patio furniture (more on that here), we decided to go with a dark walnut stain. The table completely soaked up the stain and we wanted an extra dark color, so it took two quarts to stain the entire table. On top of that, we did three coats of matte polyurethane.

Looks like a bit of a “Plain Jane” at the moment, but we’re planning on adding some wall art, accessories and lighting in the near future (again, more on that here).

After a few good long hours of drying time, we were super happy with the end results!  We really like not only the functionality, but the overall look. The table has a lot of cool deep grooves and nicks here and there, so we don’t have to worry about it getting beat up when we work on projects (gives it character, right?), but it is still nice enough to use as a buffet during outdoor get-togethers.

We’re keeping our eyes open for storage baskets to put on the bottom shelf. They will be perfect for grilling essentials and outdoor toys for our friend’s kids.

Despite my early reservations, I had a lot of fun doing this project. It’s great to work on something where you can see the immediate benefit of your work but even better when what you’re working on is super-functional. Of course, I owe it all to Ashley’s great eye for the potential of things I would simply write off as junk. Maybe I’ll have to trust her judgment more on this kind of stuff in the future… just don’t tell her I said that! ; )