Apartment Patio Tour

So excited to be sharing our first reveal of our #UncommonAdventureVan series! Since it's summer it just made sense to complete the outdoor space first so we could enjoy it while we work on the inside of our apartment. Of course, since I am the world's worst blogger, I totally forgot to get a shot of the space before. You can picture it right? It looks the same minus all of the furniture and decor! Since this is a rental, we couldn't make a whole lot of changes or hang anything from the walls. It would have been nice to cover the floor with decking and hang some lanterns or lights from the wall or the partition, however we are quite restricted in what we can do. 

We wanted a cozy, loungy space with some low seating so we built our own couch out of pressure treated wood and Ikea cushions. You can see how we did that here. We also wanted lots of greenery and candles (since there was no lighting out there) so we picked up some pots from various retailers and outfitted them with some of our favourite plants.

We were a little stumped (ha!) on what to do for a coffee table until I came across this live edge wood tray at Winners. I picked up a medium size pot from Ikea and used PL construction adhesive to attach the wood to the base.

Instead of getting an end table, we opted to build our couch a little larger than the cushions and use the extended end of the platform as a place to put some large lanterns. We can also rearrange the cushions in a few different set ups to have the end table space in the centre for sharable food, or the cushions pushed to the centre to create an end table on each side.

Since our deck is covered overhead, we weren't overly concerned about getting outdoor rated textiles. We picked up two flat woven rugs from Ikea for the floor and three regular black cushions to use on the couch or chair. 

The couch sits in the shade all day, but the chair gives us moveable seating in the sun. The stool end table also doubles as additional seating if we are entertaining.

We saw various herb cart ideas over on Pinterest which totally inspired this project. We picked up the utility cart in dark grey and filled it with herbs and succulents. 

If you are familiar with our St. John's house, you know we are not ones to use much colour. In fact we pretty much stripped all of the colour out of the main areas of the house! Something you will notice as we post our Vancouver pad is that we have actually decided to USE colour for once, starting right here on the patio. The mint accent happened sort of by accident. I was out looking for a chair and blanket at Winners when both of these beautiful minty items appeared right before my eyes! Well that's not really how it happened, the blanket came first and the chair was on super sale so it was meant to be. I didn't realize until later that my gardening tools had a little mint accent too!

As mentioned, I wanted lots of plants and lots of candles. 

In our herb cart we are growing mint (for those delicious Mojitos we told you about). Thyme and rosemary are on the centre rack, and a few succulents fill out the bottom rack to satisfy my obsession.

Although a northern mountain view would be nice, we look right over a roof top and onto a small neighbourhood which is nice since we aren't looking in anyone else's windows. The weather has been the most enjoyable so far this summer and I am curious if deck season in Vancouver is longer than it is in St. John's. 

Interested in seeing more of our Vancouver adventure? Check out our Uncommon Adventure Vancouver Episodes on our YouTube channel!