Condo Update: Patio Furniture Update

Summer is rapidly approaching and I’m eager to get my patio set up and functioning. All I brought with me in the move was a green chair that I redid last summer and it was pretty sad sitting out on the patio all by itself this spring.

My mother (wonderful woman that she is) is still in the process of clearing out her home as they plan to move out of their current house some day and she said if I wanted, I could take her old patio furniture. Which I’ll admit was not pretty on the eyes at first. Here’s how it looked while it was at my parents house.

I’m not sure if you can tell in the picture but the metal is kind of this red rust type color. I honestly do not ever remember what color it was originally. So I took four of the five pieces in the photo, even though I still wanted them all. My outdoor space is so small it would have been hard to fit it all out there. I ended up taking the two chairs, the glider, and the small side table in the back of the photo. The coffee table sadly stayed behind.

I brought them outside of her backyard and actually spray painted them (even the coffee table, just in case) on my parents side yard. I figured it would be better to paint there for a couple of reasons. First it meant I could put off loading them into to a car and hauling them to my place for a week or so. Second, my neighborhood has only one area large enough for spay painting and I didn’t want to take the chance of getting spray paint on any of my neighbors houses, cars or belongings.

Since you should be familiar with the spray paint process I’m not going to bore with you the spay painting photos, I’ll just quickly say that it took about six cans of Rustoleums Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint to repaint all five pieces of patio furniture. I let them cure for about a week at my parents house so the paint wouldn’t dent during the furniture move. Then we loaded them up in my parents SUV (I really need to get one of those) and dropped them off at my place. Can you see how much I still rely on my parents?

It’s completely obvious now that I need an outdoor area rug to go with the patio set. I think it will really help it feel like an outdoor extension of our home. Can you tell the difference in the paint color?

The Rustoleum ORB paint has this metallic glint in the paint that just gleams and sparkles in the sunlight like a certain vampire from the Twilight series. Come on you know I can’t resist an Edward Cullen reference. The paint gave the little set a brand new life and I’ve already spent several evenings out on my patio furniture just killing time with my pups and my roommate.

I haven’t found the exact right fit for the furniture yet, and I really wish I could fit the coffee table on the patio too so we could have a place to put plates and cups and the like. I need to play around with it some more, and work with the angles. I’m having difficulty because I want to keep the green chair in the other corner and I want to have enough room for the glider to actually glide. I drew a wimpy photoshop drawing to show you the aerial layout.

See what I mean about the space? There isn’t a ton of it. So I’m open to any creative ideas for a patio rearrangement.

Is the summer heat getting to you yet? Are you living in the pool on the weekends like me? Do you have any thoughts on how to layout my furniture that will allow me to add my coffee table? Post a comment and you could win an original Compartment Life window decal for your house or your car like these!