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Home Improvement and DIY
Garden Thyme, Home Improvement and DIY
Five Tips For Designing Low Maintenance Outdoor Entertaining Spaces
Summer is almost here and it’s time to start spending time in our outdoor gardens and entertaining spaces. While many of us enjoy a beautifully landscaped yard and stylish patio area, very few people enjoy all the work that goes along with maintaining outdoor spaces. Even if you love gardening or working outdoors, you might just not have the time to devote to keeping up with a lot of extra outdoor patio chores. Today I am sharing five tips for designing low maintenance outdoor entertaining spaces.*This post contains affiliate links.
Welcome back everyone! Spring weather means that the outdoor gardening, landscaping and getting the deck ready for warmer weather is just getting under way for most of us. We have had such odd weather for spring with snow all the way through the middle of April, followed by seventy degree days, but I think spring is finally here today! Hot summer days are not far off either, and soon we will all be cranking up the AC before we know it! *This post contains affiliate links.
Hey friends! Remember all those posts hopeful DIY home improvement projects I have been talking about since January? Well, I haven’t gotten around to any of the ones on my list! Instead I have changed directions a bit and started working on the dining room which was a little further down on the priority list. This weekend my husband and I installed a faux shiplap accent wall in the dining room and so far it is looking great. Here is a sneak peek!
Before
I had not really thought seriously about using shiplap in the dining room until I was taking some photos for my Early Spring Home Tour. As I was editing the photos, I realized that the farmhouse style of our dining room would be enhanced by a bit of shiplap. I decided to create a faux shiplap accent wall on the original exterior wall which is now separates the dining room from a family room addition.
In the process…
Here is the wall after being primed. It’s coming along!
If you would like to create a faux shiplap wall using inexpensive wood, there are so many great tutorials online. If you have a table saw like the ones found here at The Sharp Cut, you can even rip your own boards out of plywood underlayment to create a faux shiplap wall rather inexpensively.
Last year I was really wanting to add shiplap to the entryway just off from our kitchen, but I don’t have experience using a table saw which most of these tutorials require. My husband didn’t have any free time to cut the wood, so I decided to get creative. I used some inexpensive peel and stick faux plank wood vinyl flooring to create my shiplap, and it worked! You can read all about it here.
For the dining room we used a better quality, faux wood peel and stick vinyl flooring that looks just like wood. After painting it the wood grain really came out! I suggest checking out some DIY flooring tips online to compare some of the different sizes and depth of grain in faux wood vinyl flooring if you are thinking of trying this project.
I am so pleased with how well this project is going and I can’t wait to finish up the painting and make a few more changes to the dining room decor. I am wanting to add a few more salvaged garden style finds for spring. I would like to incorporate some unique upcycled junk, like an old rake repurposed as a wine glass holder or some other fun ways to display my vintage dishes.
Who knows what I will find on my spring junkin’ adventures! Hopefully by the end of April I will be able to share a full reveal post on the DIY Faux Shiplap Accent Wall, and a reveal of the dining room refresh. Be sure to sign up by email if you haven’t already and keep watching for updates, I think you will enjoy the post!
Happy Spring!
Amber