Patio makeover

A few months ago, Kelly and I decided that we wanted to give our back patio a makeover. For the past 4 years, it has been devoid of any furniture. It has mainly just held the grill and water table and some random brooms and outdoor toys for the kids. The past two summers if Cason was playing in the water table, we either had to stand and watch, sit on the concrete, or drag a bar stool from the kitchen out. The patio was not functional and not at all aesthetically pleasing.



The concrete also had lots of grease and other mystery stains on it.



So last month we got started and the first project we tackled was an acid stain for the concrete. We got all of the supplies at Sherwin Williams and it was a pretty straight forward, easy project. Kelly had to prepare the concrete by scrubbing with an acid wash. Then he rinsed it and let it dry. The acid stain itself was sprayed on and then swirled around with a mop. The last step was to do a sealant coat, which we added "shark bite" to so that it would have texture and the kids wouldn't slip and fall on slick concrete.



Grandma G. surprised us this week with these adorable kid sized adirondack chairs. Bryce loves his, can't you tell??? They fit in perfectly on the patio and add a fun kid size seating element that we wouldn't have had otherwise. Thanks Grandma!







We also got a very reasonably priced glider bench off amazon, which we added a sealant on. You've seen the bench already in previous posts since we've had it over a month now.





And the final element -- the one delaying this post for so long -- is this side table and bar stools.
We wanted a tall and skinny table, one that wouldn't take up much room but would give Kelly a place to set plates and spatulas while he is grilling. I scoured the internet but couldn't find anything meeting our criteria for a reasonable price. I finally found this table and it was unfinished. Perfect, we could pick out a stain close to the bench and weatherproof it and we'd be good to go. The same website had these great bar stools that were also unfinished.

The bar stools were on backorder for a few weeks so that delayed the completion of our project. The other major setback is the stain we picked out for the table did not turn out at all like we thought it would. It was a yellowish color instead of a reddish-brown. The smart thing would have been to test the stain on a small patch on the underside of the table. We did not do the smart thing. We stained the entire table, thinking maybe it would darken up as it dried. Lesson #1 learned. So we had to sand the entire table (with two different grades of sandpaper, thanks Dad) and re-stain it.

We also had the idea to tuck the bar stools under the table to get them out of the way when we're not using them. When they arrived, they were about an inch too tall. I convinced Kelly to "just cut an inch off all the legs". Lesson #2 learned: chair legs have all sorts of angles that you wouldn't think about and it's not that easy to just chop off an inch. We were left with wobbly bar stools. I did an internet search and found Larry, a retired engineer who made custom cabinetry. We gave him a call and he stopped by to pick up the bar stools. One day and $20 later, he brought them back, cut to the size we needed and non-wobbly. They tuck under the table just so:



Or we can pull them out for added seating.