Created with items I already have, my balcony has now become an outdoor "garden" room! "Party" lights strung around the perimeter of the balcony walls add a festive feel to evenings on the balcony.
I love my cottage-style condo at the edge of the woods!
I love my balcony that looks into an old crab apple tree that changes her "dress" from season to season and provides food for all manner of wildlife. I love the leafy screened privacy it provides to the balcony, all the while acting as my personal window-on-nature.
I also love that my balcony is covered so that I'm able to utilize it as an outdoor space year 'round.
I've always wanted an outdoor garden room but I'd already decorated my balcony with a chair, a chaise lounge, and plant stands in a rather typical manner. However, this Spring I decided that just because something was done one way, it didn't mean it had to stay that way.
I also love that I was able to decorate my new garden room using items I already owned! Money not spent is money saved!
After moving the chaise down to the garage, I scavenged my slip-covered love seat from my office where I seldom ever sat on it. Then, I removed the old rug from the entry way where it resides in Winter to soak up rain and snow melt.
In Spring, Summer, and Fall, the rug is rolled up and stored under my bed. Now, it will add to my balcony decor until next Winter instead of taking up space under the bed.
The vintage "yard long" print of roses was also salvaged from my office and replaced over the love seat in its new balcony location. A white-painted oak TV tray/side table, lace runner, and lamp were removed from my office, too, leaving one wall pretty bare!
The glass-topped, wrought iron table once sat at the side of the chaise. Now, it serves as a coffee table in front of the love seat. The love seat is comfy and I can choose to sit, or recline on it.
My garden room wouldn't be complete lest there was a comfy chair for my feline friend, Junie.
With a pillow beneath a fabricated cover that can be removed for laundering, Junie has his own chair on which to nap and watch birds visiting the apple tree.
The weather is still a bit nippy for spending much time enjoying my new garden room, but with days beginning to hit the 50-degree mark, it won't be long until I'm spending more time outside!
A lamp next to the love seat assures that I'll be able to spend summer evenings reading while waiting to watch the moon rise or listen to night sounds.
My new garden room is a bit "cottage", a little shabby-chic...with a few "farm-style" touches in the form of a galvanized washtub, and an "out-of photo" feed bucket.
When not being used as a cachepot for potted herbs, this galvanized tub serves as farm-style wall art.
Galvanized pitchers, tubs, and buckets make nice cache pots for nursery-potted plants and herbs.
More galvanized buckets will emerge from the storage room to act as cache pots for flowering plants as the Season progresses. Because our growing season is short here, as it was in Utah, I often don't re-pot nursery-purchased plants. Instead, I simply slip them into a bucket where they happily grow until the first hard frost. The bucket keeps leakage off the wood deck of my balcony.
Galvanized buckets make great cache pots for nursery-potted plants. In time this bucket will attain that delightful patina of old galvanized metal. Time and weathering will do the trick in a season or two.
A lidded dish on the painted tray-table adds a bit of homey decor.
On the wall opposite the love seat, I've created a montage using items from the gardens of my old folk-Victorian farmhouse in Utah.
My new outdoor room blends seamlessly with my indoor spaces.
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