Deck Seating

Mr. and Mrs. DIY with Yard Crasher Matt Blashaw

Our Facebook friends may have recently seen this photo of Mr. DIY, me, and Mr. Yard Crasher himself, Matt Blashaw.  We had the pleasure of meeting Matt after his presentation at this year's Denver Home and Garden Show, and we were happily surprised at his willingness to provide free design advice for our backyard woes.

Our glorious covered patio

Setting the stage on our backyard: one of the features that hooked us into purchasing this URH is the decadent back patio.  It's large and covered with not just a roof, but a roof with 6 sky lights!

Original Deck Seating with a dog bone

 The problem with the patio is the built in seating.  They're connected to the end of the deck.  We loved the benches but didn't love how they made the backyard feel so small. Still, how could we remove these benches since they were custom built for the space?

Well, we could remove them with the courage bestowed upon us by Mr. Yard Crasher, that's how!

Rusty Bolts

One Saturday afternoon while Mr. DIY was building his custom air filtration system in the wood shop (maybe I'll convince him to write a blog about that as it is SO COOL!) I grabbed some tools and attacked the task of removing the benches without destroying them.

"Give 'em the clamps"

The benches are solidly crafted with good materials, so unless I completely destroyed them during the removal process, I want to reuse them in a different - as yet to be determined - area on the deck.  So, with safety

glasses and work gloves on I assaulted the bolts with our cordless tools.  Some of the bolts were rusted off which led to some trouble shooting at the end when I needed to get them out of the deck (but those bolts weren't anything a vise grip couldn't handle).

Benches Removed from the Deck

Removing the Hook

Once I removed all the bolts and pushed the benches away from the deck, I took a moment to ponder the best way to get the legs all the same length.  Luckily, Mr. DIY has a cordless saw and a straight edge clamp.

 With a little bit of measuring (well, eye balling), I set the straight edge - made sure my safety glasses were in place - and cut those leg hooks off.

Safety First

Potential Bench Location

Now the benches are arranged along the side of our deck.  I want to live with them for a little bit in this location before I bolt them down.  I have to do a bit of bench adjustment (probably cut some fresh angles) to get the seating reconnected and pretty looking anyway.  So before I commit, I want to make sure this is where they should be.

Overall, this project took about 3-4 hours with a couple breaks thrown in and we're both really happy with how this completely opened up our backyard space. Now it's time to dream about what we'll do next in the back yard.

Thanks for stopping by our neck of the DIY neighborhood. And as our favorite neighbor Mr. Rogers used to say, "You always make each day a special day for me, by just being you. There's only 1 person in this WHOLE world like you; that's you yourself, and people can like you exactly the way you are.  I'll be back next time. Bye-bye!"

Bye-bye neighbor!

The Final Product

Garage Makeover

Original Cabinets

Our "until-retirement home" (URH) has a two-car garage that we were both excited for Mr. DIY to use half as his wood shop.  The original homeowner must have also been a hobbyist as the garage has walls of mismatched cabinets, counter tops, and even a plumbed sink!  The storage and usability of the space is a blessing but all the mismatched cabinets are jarring to the senses.

Mr. DIY recommended paint to tie all the different pieces together and I jumped on a design idea that I'd been pondering for a little while.

After Paint

Our garage would have a Redskins theme in honor of Mr. DIY's fandom.
Glidden, at Home Depot, sells paint in all the team colors (NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.).  The only problem is Glidden's coverage sucks - to put it lightly.  So we learned that unless you want to put down 4 coats, start with a white primer. Yes, yes, Glidden claims to be a paint + primer in one. Well that's total bull.  So spare yourself the time and either always buy Behr or start with the primer.

After learning this lesson the rest of the painting went pretty easily.  You'll see we've completed coverage for one of our 3 walls of cabinets and we even decided to paint the brown cork board walls Redskin White.

Mr. DIY is continuing to upgrade his shop with LED lighting, a home-made, built-in, fine dust particle collection system to compliment his floor dust collection system, and many other projects to transform his wood working shop into the shop of his dreams (or as close as our pocketbook will allow).

Hail to the Redskins

After painting our ENTIRE previous home different shades of grey, I found painting with bold colors to be inspiring and an absolute thrill.  Don't get me wrong, you won't find these colors inside our home but out in the shop, it amps up the energy that a creative space should have.

Thanks for stopping by our neck of the DIY neighborhood. And as our favorite neighbor Mr. Rogers used to say, "You always make each day a special day for me, by just being you. There's only 1 person in this WHOLE world like you; that's you yourself, and people can like you exactly the way you are.  I'll be back next time. Bye-bye!"

Bye-bye neighbor!