Category: Outside

We Need a New Bench for the Front Porch

We’re going to give my mom the furniture from our front porch, which means we are now looking for some replacements.

I had been planning to get IKEA’s Ammerö seating. Two of them together make a nice little bench that is perfectly sized for the far ends of the porch.

Then I saw another option when I was at Target recently.

Cute, right? It’s a Windsor Loveseat by Smith & Hawken. They were out of stock, so I got a rain check. Great, except when I called today to check stock, I noticed that the rain check is for the wrong item. And it isn’t listed on the website. And there was a lot of confusion in the store when I asked for the rain check in the first place, and I don’t know if we’ll actually be able to get a hold of one (or possibly two) of these.

So maybe we’re back to the IKEA option?

April 19, 2010
Eleanor Loves the Egg Chair

And I love this unseasonably warm 70 degree weather we’re experiencing. It’s so nice to sit in the yard together.

All right, let’s stay outside today.

April 15, 2010
Our Backyard Patio Furniture

We’ve decided to go with IKEA’s Urban chairs for our backyard. They’re comfortable, modern, inexpensive, and they won’t burn your bottom (as we fear metal chairs may). Plus Meredith and Sarah alerted me to a set of four on Craigslist, so we only needed four more to complete a set.

Now that we have decided upon dining chairs, our patio will finally be complete! Things have changed a bit since the last time I posted about the patio furniture, so I put together a design board to show how everything works together. I’ll take photos after the garden fills in a bit more.

April 14, 2010
New Roof

The roofers have been here since eight o’clock this morning, but hopefully we will have our new white roof before they leave tonight. All of the banging has made for a very unhappy (and loud) house today.

April 13, 2010
On the Fence

I’ve been thinking about trying to create a little privacy along our back fence for quite some time. I saw the DYNING wind/sun shield at IKEA this weekend, and at just $7.99 I figured it was worth a try. I’m not sure if I like it or not now that it’s up though.

The weather has warmed up but the trees and bushes have not leafed out yet, so everything looks a bit dead and brown. I almost didn’t post this photo because the yard looks so bad right now, but the neighbor’s weeping cherry trees are in bloom and at least those look nice. We’re going to add some Hicks Yews to that area soon, and that will probably give us the privacy we’re looking for. Until the evergreens grow in though, the stripes could look cool as a background. Plus, they’re fun to see from the alley.

Here’s an old picture, just for reference so you can see what the area looks like when the leaves are on the trees.

I think I need to see what that portion of the yard looks like in a few weeks to make my decision.

April 12, 2010
Our Roof is Leaking

It has been incredibly windy in the windy city lately, and a huge portion of our roof has flapped up.

Wednesday night as I was getting into bed, I noticed that the bed was wet. At first I thought one of the cats had peed on the bed and I was pretty upset. Brandon thought the area was too large to be from the cats, and when he looked up he noticed that water had streaked the light fixture. Then I noticed the trail of bubbling paint along the ceiling and the four inches of water inside the globe of the light fixture (which no longer works, by the way). Great. Our roof is leaking.

We called a few roofers out to assess the damage, and it looks like we’ll be replacing the entire flat roof on our home’s aging addition. The wood beneath the shingles is in poor condition, so that will need to be replaced as well.

While we’re at it, we’ll be switching our dark, energy-absorbing roof to a cool, heat-reflecting, more earth-friendly white roof. Honestly, I’m not crazy about the look of a white roof. That portion of the roof is difficult to see from most angles though, and it seems that a “cool roof” is the responsible thing to do. Lemonade from lemons, eh?

April 9, 2010