Including this week I’ve got 2 weeks left to finish our outdoor spaces for the One Room Challenge, hosted by Linda of Calling It Home // here //. You should totally be tracking the progress on the official participants spaces too! // here // Make sure you click through all the linking participants as well // here //. I’ve got some friends doing the challenge as well and we’re all hard at work! Today is the beginning for the really fun stuff: the dining area & the pergola.
*HomeSense & Home Depot Canada sponsored this post, but all thoughts are my own. Thank you for supporting the brands that make PMQ for two possible.
Catch-up on the journey for the Spring 2017 One Room Challenge – The Great Outdoors
// Week 4 //
Week 6
Back when I started planning and scheming for the spring ORC I had been envisioning a pergola or structure out back. Our backyard, while lovely, is very exposed and provides no natural shade. It makes it hard to entertain with a 10 ft harvest table at any point during the day when you have no way of shadding anything, let along garnering some privacy. We could have put up a fence all around the yard too, but that seemed excessive and would cost a fortune. We both agreed that getting a pergola would be the best possible solution as it would help frame part of the space and provide shade for our biggest entertaining area.
Luckily for us, Home Depot sells a variety of pergolas and shade structures // here //. We looked around and spent quite a few Saturdays in-store testing them out and sitting under them having long, drawn-out conversations while regular people looked at us oddly. We settled on the 10 x 10 ft pergola from Hampton Bay // here // and brought it home to instal over Easter weekend. Fun story, we live 10km too far for Home Depot to consider us a local delivery, so instead we rented their handy-dandy van and brought everything home ourselves.
DH had a 5 day weekend so did quite a bit of work out back that weekend. Not only did we figure-out how to assemble the pergola and get it on even footing in our very uneven backyard, but we (read: DH) even dug a pad for some 18 x 18″ paving stones to provide an even footing the table. I hope you followed along on IG stories that weekend because it was a hoot! You may be able to notice in some of the photos, but our harvest table has warped a bit over the past few summers because it was left on uneven footing.
Catch the Harvest Table DIY // here //
In case it’s not obvious I need to point out that DH is the unsung hero of many of our bigger projects. I have no eye for structural detail, and he’s focused on it like a hawk. We complete each other <3 because he can’t do big picture and tends to get lost in details.
We also took the occasion to dig for Bruce’s electric fence. If you notice little flags in the background those mark the lines so that while he’s training with the new system he can spot where the limit is. He’s been on the collar for a week and bit and seems to prefer the un-encumbered freedom that the long tether never provided. Oh goober <3
If you clicked through to my Harvest Table DIY // here // you’ll have noticed that it seems to be a different colour now! And it is. That’s a post coming Friday, as it still has a few coats of poly and some sanding before I call it finished. Don’t worry, you’ll get all those deets soon. In the meantime let’s enjoy some of the styling I’ve tempted myself with.
This isn’t the final look – obvi – but I’ve been dying to get some of these elements in place for weeks, and to finally test them out has been good fun. It helped me gage what is realistic and what needs to go back to HomeSense in favour of other items. All the trays, tableware, linens and lanterns are from my local HomeSense store. If you’re near me and go looking for them you won’t find them! I snatched ’em up already.
To give you a better idea of what still needs to happen in this “space” before the reveal here’s my To-Do list:
- Sew box cushions for the benches.
- Buy captain’s chairs for the ends of the table.
- Lay grass seed (once it stops freezing at night) to fill all the patches left-over from our digging and from previous occupants.
- Get plants and planters for the pergola area.
- Build a bar cart / cooler to sit next to the dining area.
Wish me luck in accomplishing the rest of my to-do list before we reveal on Week 6!
