The Outside

I slipped on the decking on the way in to the house on the very first visit (good start!). As much as there is to do in the interior, I decided that was the only time I was going to fall on that decking (at least sober) so job one was clearing up the outside a little.

We started by weeding the courtyard and scrubbing down all of the wood with a decking cleaner.The back decking looked rotten but once it had a good scrub down I was so surprised that it’s actually in pretty good nick it just had several years worth of moss and sludge covering it!

Before shot of the back deck.

The wall at the back was never finished or sealed at the top, so as water pours in it’s rotting the wall from the inside out so we will look for some ridge tiles or similar to finish it off.

Next came the pressure washer….

This was my first go at using a water blaster and I think I have found my calling.

Once everything was clean and dry we tested a few decking stains, but even with the ‘natural’ colour stains we felt it was a shame to lose the colour of the wood so we opted for a decking oil instead, we went with a Ronseal one and the wood just soaked it up.It will probably be something we need to do once a year or maybe even a few times but we love the finish keeping a more Scandi look with the paler wood rather than staining it a darker tone.

It will be so fun come Spring to have a plan of what we would like to do with the back deck. We would love it to be a space for BBQs and for evening drinks around a fire pit and we also love the idea of growing a few things out here; basil for cooking, mint for mojitos and lavender for use in my Into The Wild Soaps for @kipcandleco (this is mine and KP’s Candle Co. if you haven’t already checked us out).

The front yard needs a lot more work- a lot of the doors and wood work will need replacing and repairing, but for now we have it tidied up and protected where possible, and best of all it is a slip free zone!