Category: house stuff

So, much to the pleasure of the government, I did not end up saving much of the money I got from my tax reimbursement. Instead, I decided to invest it in my house, in the courtyard to be exact.

In between the house and garage there is a small, 14×17 space (with all but 8×5 of that taken up with stairs going to the garage), with one side being the wall under the window of my kitchen/foundation of the house which is full of pipes coming out of the wall and an access door to under the house and various electric boxes, not very attractive. (The pic here is looking out from the kitchen window, directly below is the said 8×5 space). But with the weather here being pretty gorgeous lately and seeing all of my neighbors with patio chairs and flowers in their courtyards made me decide I’d like to enjoy the same thing, just had to figure out the right way to arrange things.

Over Mother’s Day weekend when my parents were visiting my mom and I went out plant-scouting to figure out what would work best with the amount of sunlight I get in the courtyard (get maybe 3 hours of midday sun total, so pretty much everything would need to be a part-shade or shade plant). We decided on hosta, impatients and begonias. While we were at the Pottery we found these really great wrought-iron panels with hook/ring things to hang pots on it, so we put those up along the house-wall to cover all the pipes and stuff. Unfortunately, with the panels being a pretty open grid, they didn’t really cover very much, so I was back to more pondering on what to do with that.

Another week goes by, I’m trying to plan everything out on graph paper to figure out exactly what I can fit in the space and finally last weekend I decided, ok, let’s just get this done and stop trying to plan everything out so much. I recruited some help from Jeremy who has access to fun power tools and we built a 2x4x3.5 foot planter box out of 1×6 pretreated lumber to go underneath the upper walkway of the deck, that was Sunday’s project. During the following week I got 14 bags of dirt to fill up the planter box, as well as packing peanuts to put on the bottom layer so I wouldn’t have to buy as much dirt, and it would give me more drainage. With a holiday weekend last weekend I decided everything was going to be purchased and finished before the weekend was out. So I put all of the dirt and such in on Saturday, and Sunday I went back to the Pottery and got a bunch of clay pots and flowers to put in the planter box and on the lattice. Sunday afternoon I recruited Jeremy’s help again and got everything planted and, on a whim pretty much, decided to swing through Bed, Bath & Beyond to try and find patio furniture. I’d looked at Home Depot, Lowes, Target, and online a bunch of places and hadn’t found anything that was in the right price range that was a style and material that I liked (wanted wrought iron or metal so it wouldn’t deteriorate quickly, no woven seats, no ornate designs, not-bar-height, not a giant 5 or 8 piece set). Happily we walk into the BB&B and right in the front is a “conversation set” of 2 chairs, 2 ottomans and a side table, perfect! so with the ubiquitous 20% off coupon (I think at this point I have about 15 of them) I bought that set and assembled it that afternoon.

Monday morning I got my first chance to sit out there with a cup of coffee, and it was great. I’m sure I’ll find more little things to nit-pick at but I really love how things turned out. It’s like I added another little room to the house (although the cats read me the riot act from the upstairs windows when I’m sitting out there, pretty sure they’re jealous). But I’m definitely looking forward to sitting out there in the (hopefully cool!) summer evenings with a nice beverage or in the mornings with a cup of coffee.

P.S. Pics of everything will be posted soon!