Ugly Patio Box to Cute Outdoor Seating

We bought a patio box a few years ago to store all the boys outside toys. At the time it was really functional for keeping all their toddler riding toys, sand buckets, and their Fisher Price Bubble Mower in one place instead of all over the yard. We even used it as a seat sometimes, but over the years our patio box took a beating. It even had a hole in the top that I'm pretty sure came from a baseball bat. So when I started our patio makeover I knew something had to be done to our old neglected patio box.

The first thing I had to tackle was the big hole in the top of the lid....and it was duct tape to the rescue! I simply used stripes of duct tape on the outside and inside of the lid to seal up the hole.

 I bought a piece of foam and cut it to size with a bread knife...I've also heard an electric knife works well for cutting foam, but I was too lazy to dig ours out of the back of the kitchen cabinet:) After removing the lid from the box, I sprayed the lid with spray adhesive and stuck my cut to size piece of foam on it. Then I sprayed the top of the foam with spray adhesive. I placed the fabric upside down on the ground and carefully positioned the foam/lid onto the fabric.

 Using screws and my hubby handy drill, we attached the fabric to the lid after wrapping the fabric around the outside edge of the lid. I wasn't sure how a screw would work on the plastic lid, but after we found the right kind of screw it was no problem at all. I have no idea what kind of screw we used, just that some of the ones that we had wouldn't work:)

 This is what the inside of the lid looked like after I finished attaching the fabric and foam. If you try this make sure that you pay attention to where the hinges are so that you don't cover them up with fabric. My hinges where on the right side in the picture below which is why it looks different than the other three sides.

I impatiently waited for Jason to get home from work so he could reattach the lid for me. I tried a few times but couldn't figure it out:) Once the lid was in place, we had a great new seating area on our patio!

You can check out the rest of our patio makeover here!

Patio Makeover Reveal

After more than a month of work, I'm finally sharing our patio makeover with you {even though I still have two more projects to do for this to be complete}! I don't have a before picture mostly because our before patio was really sad...no shade, a rusty old table, and way too many toys crammed in one place! Now it is this bright and cheery space that I love!

This whole project started because I wanted to add a little more shade to our backyard so the boys would be a little cooler playing in the backyard during the SUPER hot summer! We added the pergola a few years ago, but it never really gave us the shade that we were hoping for. So I hit the fabric store during an awesome outdoor fabric sale and bought a ton of fabric. I cut the fabric into strips {and hemmed each edge to keep it from fraying} then Jason weaved the fabric in and out of the braces of the pergola attaching it to the pergola with staples along the top edge.

Not only did the fabric add a ton of color to the space, but it created just the right amount of shade over the back patio without seeming like a full roof over it. We also added some outdoor lighting to the pergola so we can use it more at night too.

After all that color was added to the pergola, I decided we needed a new table with a little color too. We traded out our old rusty table for a new picnic table that is much more functional for little kids. The table came unfinished {we got it at Lowe's for less than $100} and I painted it with a coat of primer and then a coat of {Honeypot from Valspar I think} exterior paint.

To add just a little more color to the patio area, I also painted out white back door with the same yellow color.

Two of our old chairs got a new coat of black spray paint and I recovered the cushions with some of the scraps of outdoor fabric that I used on the pergola.

I've already shared out Outdoor Toy Organizer...

...and my old window turned outdoor wall art.

I also gave our old {and half way broken} patio box a makeover as well. It went from this:

to this:

{I'll share the step by step on how I turned this old patio box into a really cute bench tomorrow.}

We picked up a new light fixture for over the back door and I am still working on a chandelier creation to hang over the picnic table, but for now I am really pleased with how our new patio looks!

Old Window to Outdoor Wall Art

Last week I shared a little sneak peak of our in progress patio makeover which included our outdoor toy organizer and a cute {but way too plain} window. I started with an old window {that had previous hung on the wall in the master bedroom} and I added some yellow and white fabric to the glass using spray adhesive and clear polyurethane.

The color was perfect and it added a little whimsy to the patio, but it was just too plain. So I decided to add a vinyl quote and some cute pennants!

I used my Silhouette to cut out a few pennant shapes from a scrap of leftover outdoor fabric.

 I added a line of hot glue to the back of each pennant...

 ...and then stuck them onto a piece of twine.

I used my Silhouette to cut out a quote on premium vinyl so that it would last outside in the elements {I used the same vinyl on the galvanized buckets too}. I decided on the quote "You are my sunshine" because I thought it went well with the sunshine-y yellow color of the chevron fabric:)

To finish up the project, I added the pennants to the window using a few thumbtacks, making sure that they didn't hang low enough to cover up the vinyl lettering.

The boys and I are heading to the hardware store this morning to pick up the last {hopefully} few things I need to put the finishing touches on the patio. If all goes well {meaning if I can manage to work the drill by myself} I should have some pictures of the completely project to share tomorrow.

Go HERE to see the completed patio makeover.