extreme makeover

This past weekend Nick and I decided that it had been too long since we'd done any major projects in our apartment. Naturally, we headed to the place that always seems to give us big ideas- Urban Ore. I had headboards on my mind, but Nick was dreaming up something entirely different. We spied a bundle of dark hardwood "leftovers" with a $20  price tag and it was then and there that we decided it was high time to makeover our balcony.

I didn't include our balcony in our little home tour section, because frankly, it was a little embarrassing. We inherited a bar table, empty planters, and some questionable mismatched carpet squares from the previous tenants. Although we appreciated the table and eating outside in the nice weather, we didn't spend much time out here. Instead of changing what we didn't like, we spent the past six months adding to the mess. Without further ado, here's the gross before picture (and please note that it's been raining like crazy here which contributes to the extra messiness of the whole situation):

Not only had this space come to house Henry's liter box, it was also where I completed lots of my painting projects, hence the yuck in the corner. After a lot of gross cleanup and removal we were left with a blank slate slab:

We completed quite a few different projects to pull this space together, including laying hardwood, creating several benches, and an outdoor table. We'll detail each process  in later posts, but here is the after shots of our mostly finished project:

 

Quite a transformation, eh? Because we're renters and didn't want to spend a ton of money on a space that wasn't truly ours, we kept costs down and made sure everything we bought/used was something we could eventually take with us.

The grand total of this little makeover?? $113

Not too shabby....