Mosaic Patio Oasis

I have been a little busy bee buzzing around to get my patio/deck space ready for Spring/Summer, so please pardon my absence! 

I’ve never bought patio furniture before, but common sense told me it would be reasonably priced since there’s no way a wicker love seat meant for the outdoors would cost more than my living room furniture.  Granted, I bought pretty cheap furniture as soon as I graduated from college thinking it would be temporary and in a year I would be a real adult and ready to make chic and modern couch purchases.  And now here I am three and a half years later with the same cheap couch and chair that has increasingly become scarred with cat scratches.  Luckily, with Sid’s couches the cats stay away and don’t claw it.  I guess they think this is there couch, which is probably pretty accurate.

Anyways, to my displeasure and shock, patio furniture is freaking expensive!  Who knew??  Prices always seem to mess with my beautiful vision.  But, thankfully I am crafty and decided to make the best of it.  My plan is to have a small love seat on the “deck” right outside our kitchen door.  I was able to find a cost effective compromise on amazon for a rattan love seat.  You can see the deck here:

 I do love it!  But I still need to spruce it up with some more flowers, and outdoor cushions/pillows.  The highlight of the porch is this beautiful iron Peacock I found at a market in Baltimore!  I can put my empty wine bottles and he is just beautiful.  I’m obsessed.  And now my wine selection will depend on which wine is in the prettiest bottle.  

Now for the patio part of our outdoor space.  I wanted to have a bistro table and chairs so we could eat dinner outside, or have a romantic glass of wine with flowering vines in the background.  But something that is easy to move around for when we entertain and have people over outside.  Sid has a TV dinner stand that we didn’t use, so I thought it’d be perfect to transform into my bistro table. 

There’s a warehouse in Baltimore called “The Loading Dock” where you can buy all sorts of discounted home construction materials.  So, I went there to pick up some tiles that I was planning on putting on the table, to give it that chic bistro feel.  I got these guys for $5.  I have no clue what they would normally cost, but seemed cheap to me!  I picked up some tile glue and grout at my favorite local Ace, and set to work.

It took me several hours until I was happy with a design pattern.  Now I seriously give complex mosaic-ers a lot of credit – that takes a lot of artistic vision to do!  My pattern is obviously very simple, and unfortunately as I don’t have a tile cutter and I’m using all different sizes of tiles, there are some bigger empty space areas.  And I think the grout in a tube I bought is tough to evenly spread out, so I've got some messy spots.  But for my purposes I’m happy and satisfied!

Once the arranging is done, you just glue each tile and let set for 72 hours.  Then you can grout, and wait another 72 hours for it to set!  But finally, you’ll have a beautiful and easy (despite length process) mosaic bistro table!  Now I just need some bistro chairs…

Where the romantic bistro area will hopefully soon go: