This year is strange for a number of reasons with Covid-19 being the biggest one. The other part that is almost as strange is the lovely sunshine and clear weather we have been having in Ireland since this started. Almost as rare as a worldwide pandemic.
With that in mind and with everything shut down around the country for the near future it seems like we will be spending the majority of our summer visiting and hanging out in the back garden for beers and BBQ. At the moment I have a house at the end of an estate but that comes with a decent size garden which up until now I have done nothing with.
I kept it as a large piece of grass with a solitary tree from the previous owner. I keep myself very busy so didn't even have a mower for it as there was a nice old gentleman that did some of the lawns in the area very cheaply and he liked to keep busy so it was a win win for both of us.
Since there is now no travel he hasn't been able to continue to cut lawns this year and it had gotten to a break point making me buy a mower last week. So technically turning it into a lawn from the field it had become was step one. It has a huge amount of untapped potential and I have decided to start transforming it into a nicer area to spend the summer and have friends and family over once the current restrictions are lifted. The big plan is to create a nice little patio and seating area just outside my door to relax in. Add some flower beds and more plants for decoration. Then tidy up all the rough edges to make it the complete package.
You can see I have a nice bit of room to work with and should be able to make it look a lot prettier than it is now. While I had always planned on laying a patio when the hardware stores re-opened there was a garden furniture set that came up for sale last week that was too good to pass up on and I had to take it while I could. That will be the first step for me to do and from there I can see how much room I will need for the patio and mark it out from there.
It was about €200 cheaper than other ones I had seen online so when it was there it was an easy yes. It came in the usual flat pack which gave me a nice job for a sunny evening as it's something I actually enjoy. A lot of pieces and a plan to put them all together. Once out of the box it had plenty parts, screws and lots of similar pieces which I was delighted with to keep me busy for the day.
I had to build it in four stages and the parts were so big that it needed to be done outside. The little table was first as it had unique parts to the other items and it went together really handy with most of them clicking into place. Putting in support pieces and screwing the last bits into place for stability. Couldn't have taken more than 30 minutes start to finish.
The single seater came next. This was trickier as all of the sides, supports and screws were the same as the other items and took longer as I had to separate out everything first and make sure that I had the right parts for each of the three items to build. The first one was the longest but after seeing how it went together I could put together the other single and the double seater without the instructions and it really sped up. Maybe another 90 minutes for those but when your having fun outside in the sunshine you don't even notice the time passing. It made for a good puzzle to keep me busy and turned out really nicely once put together. For the price they were great value and what is next now is to lay a patio in that space beside the tree and add some decoration where the wall is looking a little bare.
I'm really happy with the result and can already see how it's going to look when i have everything put together for my little garden space for the summer. I'm sure it's going to get a lot of use throughout the year and if the sun stays out that is where you will find me most evenings.
