House Beautiful

Tag Archive for 'back patio wonderland'

Jackpot!

We were coming home from a long walk this past weekend when we stumbled upon THIS fortuitous scene in my neighbors’ yard.  I was a little sad to see that big, beautiful, perfect-for-climbing tree taken down, but I got over it real quick when I started having visions of sugarplums & grumdrops & new DIY’d furniture in our house.  Also, we have some comedians on the block:

Hey, I giggled.  Anyhow – LOOK at that GRAIN!  I seriously see the beast from Beauty and the Beast in there.  I wanted to steal this big guy and make a coffee table, but it would’ve taken Goliath + the Hulk + a crane + the Beast himself to get that sucker home.

So, Matty and I chose a log about 1 ft. wide and decided to make a side table out of it.  Then, we recruited a wiry and oh-so-nice little old man named Jim with a chainsaw to cut it to our desired height, in exchange for a few beers pops.  THEN, in our infinite wisdom, we decided since we were only 4 doors down, we’d just roll it home and that would be our workout for the day.  That was probably 3 minutes of sheer entertainment for the neighbors…  then we smartened up & borrowed a dolly.  Here’s where this bad boy landed:

It’s parked in our backyard patio wonderland temporarily until we can dry it out for a few months, strip the bark, sand it till it feels like a baby’s bottom and then stain/seal it.  It should *probably* be in the garage or inside to dry out so it doesn’t rot, but it looks so pretty right now holding my cocktails I can’t bear to move it.  When I do, I want to do ‘er up like one of these… The first ones in a whitewashed stain are STUNNING.  Emma from A Beautiful Mess put them on casters, which I think is genius because these bad boys are HEAVY. Ours probably weighs about 300-400 pounds.

I could also use a little bathroom caddy, but getting that sucker up the stairs is probably a no-go.

If you like the look but don’t live next door to Paul Bunyan and just wanna hit the easy button, you can snap one this one up at West Elm for $199.

Did you guys snap up any good finds last weekend?  Maybe soil your liver a bit and dumpster dive like we did?

xoxo,

photo credits:  bathroom caddy stump