These tips on creating a fun outdoor living room for the family is sponsored by Jasco Enbrighten Vintage Café Lights.
These tips on creating a fun outdoor living room for the family is sponsored by Jasco Enbrighten Vintage Café Lights. The key to a great outdoor living room is creating a space that everyone can use. When you do that, you can use the space for everything from parties and get togethers, family game nights, or just relaxing outdoors.
With the cooler fall weather, I find myself wanting to be outdoors more while I was at home. The kids are the same way but the problem has been “The Mess” that was our back patio. I was determined to create an outdoor living room where the whole family could gather together, play games, maybe have dinner, and just hang out. This is our “new to us” outdoor living space. This month I set time aside to finally clean all the junk off our back patio and organize a space that we could use. Here’s what I did:
- Pressure washed the concrete on the back patio.
- Brought back our patio table, patio chairs, and propane grill.
- Bought new cushions for the patio chairs.
- Added some new wall art.
- Converted my potting bench to an outdoor game bench and added games.
- Added Jasco Enbrighten Vintage Café Lights behind the rain gutters around the deck.
Most of my time was spent cleaning off the back patio. It took a full day and a half. After our big summer road trip, the patio became a storage space for bicycles, ice coolers, fence project leftovers, barbecue grills, chicken feed containers, bicycle rack…… you kinda get the idea. It was so bad that I didn’t even take a picture of it before I started. It was a little embarrassing. But I did take a photo after I cleared everything out and brought back my patio chairs.
This is our clean slate for our outdoor living room. After everything was cleared out, I added a few new pieces of wall art and seat cushions to bring color to the space. The two BIG additions were the game bench (aka repurposed potting bench) and new Jasco Enbrighten Vintage Café Lights to double our evening living space.
During the spring and summer, my potting bench sees a LOT of use. But during the fall and winter, it just sits there unused. I changed that with a few wire shelves and lidded plastic storage bins. Instead of dragging games and sports equipment outside whenever we wanted to play, I placed them on this bench.
For smaller items like outdoor checkers, chalk, dominoes, juggling balls, etc. I placed them in the lidded containers to prevent them from getting damp or too dusty. Now the kids and I can go outdoors and just grab a game and start playing it.
The second big addition was patio string lights. I added these Jasco Enbrighten Vintage Café Lights around the deck portion of our back patio. I already have the black string of color changing Jasco string lights at the RV. But for the house, I choose this white string of Jasco Enbrighten Vintage Café Lights with vintage looking stainless covers to give it a lantern look.
On my back patio, I already have two outdoor ceiling fans with a light unit. I often have the fans running for the air circulation they provide. But I don’t use the lights because I dislike the harsh light they put up. The warm vintage feel that these new Edison-style café string lights emit is something I really like. I am actually in the process of redoing my living with an urban farmhouse design. It’s a similar type of 20th century look, so I can tie this new outdoor living room space with my home’s interior.
The lights themselves are impact resistant, lifetime LED bulbs that save on energy, never need replacing, and produce warm white light at 2200K. They are rated for year around outdoor use too. So once they are up (which is super easy by the way), you don’t have to take them down.
The kids love this new outdoor living room space. The Jasco Enbrighten Vintage Café Lights have really extended the amount of usable space at night on our back patio. I can envision more family game nights outdoors and more outdoor entertaining in our future. Eventually I would like to illuminate more of our backyard with additional cafe light strings. I currently have the Jasco Enbrighten Vintage Café Lights 24 ft length, but there are other lengths that can be linked up to 750 feet. The other two things I would like to get is a propane fire pit for the patio and an outdoor bluetooth speaker to play music on. Otherwise, this is the perfect outdoor living room space for a family who wants to get reclaim their back yard and enjoy time together.
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