Have you ever noticed that when you start one small project at your house, it always turns in to another project and then another and another?

We wanted to create a bit of shade over our patio a couple of years ago, so my husband decided that he could build a pergola himself. He spent several hours, days and weekends getting the lumber, screws, paint and other things he needed to complete the project. After a few weeks, we had a pergola over our patio (not a professional job by far, but a pergola it was.) It was okay for a couple of years, but really, we needed a covered patio, not a pergola.

So, about a month ago, we started getting bids for our new covered patio. Our covered roof was finally completed after a few weeks. We now have a beautiful covered patio. The only problem now is that we need better looking furniture. So, we started shopping for new patio furniture. We bought the furniture and it looks good! We really don't want our new cushions to get wet if we get a bad storm that blows sideways….. so, we needed a deck box to store our new cushions. OK, finally found a perfect deck box for the new cushions.

Now that we have nice furniture and a nice new roof, we noticed how ugly the actual concrete looks. We needed to stain our concrete. Went to Lowes, shopped for different colors and bought concrete stain. Husband stained the concrete and it looked good, but needed a bit more stain in certain places, as a lot of it drained off since our patio slopes a lot. We put another coat on, but now it looks like painted concrete, not stained. We put the furniture back on the newly stained/painted patio and it looks nice, but now we think we need another layer of some other color to give it dimension. We are still contemplating that.

We also need to decide what to do with our posts. Right now they are 4X4 treated wood. Looks like our next project will be finishing the posts. After that, we will need some fun lighting.

I guess when you are a home owner, there is always something else to do and one thing always leads to another!!

Kristin Gwaltney Team