Patio Makeover DIY Transformation

It's important to remember that life is almost entirely void of meaning. So to fabricate some meaning, I made over my patio. I loved it just as it is. I just wanted to make it more cozy, more comfortable, more cute and adorable. Also, I needed to fill a lot of time in quarantine. This is Marty. He loves laying, sleeping. He loves biting me. He does love that. And he's also really good at it. Oh, wow. Okay, so watch the video or like don't watch it. Live your life. But if you do watch it, I welcome you to leave a comment below. Tell me your least favorite thing about the video. It could be something you don't like about me, something that I do, an energy I put off that you really don't enjoy. Make it mean. Make it true. Make me cry. The best comment will get a shout out in my next video. He thinks he has hands. Look at this. You think you have hands. Wow. Good for you. You have hands. I'm so jealous. Not. So this is the patio we're working with. It's it's fine. It's not great. It's not sexy right now. I don't want to hang out there. Nobody wants to hang out there, but we can improve. I do like the pavers on the ground. They're in a cross weave pattern and I like the paver edging. It kind of helps give definition to the space. But other than that, like nothing good is going on here. It's bleh. So let's change that. The key to making the space feel cozy is adding some kind of enclosure. A little fence will make it so you're not just floating in the abyss. Next is mood lighting. We'll hang string lights from posts, which will be supported by some giant flower planters, as opposed to digging them into the ground because this is a rental. We'll do some light landscaping, aka planting flowers. Is that considered landscaping? I don't know. Then I just want to add lots of seating. Bitches love options. Options. And if you are looking for an outdoor sofa, I found the comfiest one. So stay tuned. So these planters are going to be filled with concrete, which will hold the posts, which will hold the string lights. I'm using terracotta planters, but because they're terracotta, they're porous. And so they could crack if they're like overfilled with concrete. So I'm not going to fill them. I'm going to use these plastic plant liners and put the concrete in there to contain it. And then the rest of the planter will be just filled with soil. I wanted to cut the plastic planter down to size. You cannot cut through these with scissors. Apparently, I had to use an X-Acto knife and things went a lot better. Just FYI. Before pouring concrete in the plastic parts, I covered them with plastic bag to keep the water in. So yes, Marty is much younger here. He's like two months old here. I filmed this whole thing months ago and Marty is much older now. So that is the mystery of Marty's age. He was a total furball, a total menace. And oh my God, I love him so much. Okay, back to business. So I filled the bottom of the planter with pea pebbles. You can just get them at Home Depot. They're just tiny little pebbles. I guess like a pea. Oh my God. I just figured that out now. Okay, it allows for easier drainage. Then I put the plastic lined planter inside, opened up my Quikrete. Quikrete's just like faster drying concrete. It's at Home Depot. It's all there. We're Lowe's. I'm not discriminating. You mix in the water, follow the directions, mix it up. It's concrete. I mean, it's fun. If concrete isn't fun, then I don't know what it is. So once you mix the concrete, you can just start working the post in. I used a cedar post. You do want to use cedar or like a pressure treated wood for the outdoors. Otherwise, it's going to rot because of weather. Once the concrete dried, I just covered the rest of it with whatever pea pebbles I had and then came soil. This was a difficult challenge for Marty. He thinks any big plastic bag contains his kibble because that's the kind of bag his kibble comes in. So just the sound of the plastic, it drives him to insanity. I did forget to film me planting the flowers, but just close your eyes and picture it. It was a lot like what you're picturing. Then to take the planters just one step extra. I got some of these larger river rocks, they're called, and use them to make a base. I think it just grounds the planters a little bit more and I love that pop of white between the warm terracotta and the cool grass. For the string lights, I ordered these Bright Tech string lights off of Amazon and I attached them using a drill and hook and eye screws. When you're trying to find the right size drill bit for a screw, just hold the screw up behind the drill bit. You should be able to see the teeth coming out just over the drill bit. Look at that dirty, dirty nail polish. Wow. Then I use these L-shaped plant hooks to attach a couple of flowers to the top of the post. These are begonias. I've learned begonias are really easy to keep alive. So I highly recommend. So I intended to attach the remaining ends of the string lights to the gutter using these gutter hooks, but then I got up to the gutter and found that the gutters were covered. They're covered gutters. What is that? No one told me that these existed. It really ruined my plan. So I had a few options. I could tear a hole in the gutter, which I did try to do. Don't recommend. I could have built a second set of posts here to support the string lights. Didn't feel like it. Instead, my neighbor, who's a contractor, offered to drill a hole into the brick of the house. He said my landlord will never know. I guess we'll find out. Then we attached with a screw eye and a zip tie and called it a day. JK, there's more. I did get these solar lamps from Home Depot. They are super bright. They're amazing. You just dig them into the ground. Oh my God, Marty, really good work. He's doing a shovel. That's nice. Here, I'm digging them in around the patio. I did end up moving them farther out in the yard, but of course didn't film it. So close your eyes, picture it, and let's move on with our lives. Life is too short. Like I said, a heavy-duty fence is a ton of labor, a ton of money, and we just don't need that here. It's a rental property and I don't want to do a lot of damage to the land. I knew that this short little lattice plus a couple of cedar posts would do the trick. The goal is just make a small barrier around the patio. Nothing heavy-duty. So I just use a circular saw to cut down the posts to the height I wanted them to be. Again, these are thinner cedar posts. I did sand them down a little bit just because my puppy will eat it and I don't want him to get a splinter. I did add a little angled end on the top of the cedar post just for cuteness. There's no function to it, but I like it. Once the lattice pieces were cut down to the right size, I just used clamps to hold them in place on the post and attached them with a nail gun. Always protect your eyes. One thing I wish I'd done differently is more accurately measure the height of each post and the height at which I was attaching the lattice. That would have made it look more even. You shouldn't live with regrets, but here we are. I wanted all the furniture to be really neutral in color. It's all kind of in this beige family. I would never do that indoors, but outside, I don't want the furniture to be the focus. I want the grass, the nature, the sky to be the focus, not the chair. I think these chairs are super cute. It's this wicker set that came with the table. They have these stools that slide out from underneath so they could actually be used as extra seating. The cushions have gotten wet in the rain and they dry off, clean really easily, super durable. I really like them. Oh my god, this sofa. This costs the same as an outdoor sofa from Ikea, but it's so much more comfortable. The cushions are amazing. The fabric is so soft, like no one's paying me to say this. I just like this sofa. This table I got from Everything But The House, which has online estate sales. Definitely check it out. Last word of business is this weird little nook in the corner that's cut out into the patio. There's another angle of it. Good job, Angelica. I found two benches of the perfect size off of Facebook Marketplace. I think they were 20 bucks each. They were painted gray when I picked them up. So I just wanted to sand that off. The screws were rusted on so I couldn't actually get the screws off to sand every single inch, but it did my very best job. You know, it's supposed to be something you enjoy. You do it for yourself. Nobody else cares. Pick the things you want to be a perfectionist about and pick the times when you don't mind leaving a little extra gray paint on a bench. It's okay. We're planting some flowers covered in paint. Oh, nice blanket. Very lovely. Stick. I like that stick. You guys remember what we were starting with? It was a trash heap of broken dreams. Lots of potential, but nothing really going on. That stick was killing me. You guys, I love this patio so much more now. I feel like I'm hanging out in a living room in the middle of a garden. It's amazing. I did this makeover months ago and I've been out there every day since. I feel pretty happy. So that is the makeover. Thanks for watching. I'd love to see you guys in the next video. But I'm honestly much more interested if you hate it because let's be honest, people get much more creative with their comments when they hate something. Yeah, is that true? So if you hate it, put it in the comments below. Meanest comment, I will read it out loud and give you a shout out in my next video. It's a win-win. Don't say anything mean about Marty. Marty did his best job in this makeover. Look at him right now. He's trying to eat his own dog tags. Subscribe. You know what the deal is. You know what to do. What was I going to say? Was I talking? You can also like the video. That helps a lot. Oh, he's back. That's good. This dog is trying to eat me. Bye.