Upcycling a Roadside Patio Set

Last spring, my husband took our boys to the park and stumbled on some roadside treasures: a rusty, chippy vintage iron patio set and a half door. We knew right away that the patio set, despite missing its table top and chair seats, was special in all of the right chippy and rusty ways. It felt meant for our yard.

But knowing that something is meant to be in your yard and knowing where something is meant to be in your yard are two very different things. That poor patio set has been drug all over the yard for the past year as we’ve tried to figure out its permanent home.

After building our garden, our front walkway felt very imbalanced. Our mammoth (but beautiful garden) takes up the entirety of the left side of our front yard. While we have big plans of the English garden variety for the right half side of our yard, the imbalance felt like a “right now” problem to address.

Thus, the reclaimed brick patio right off the right side of the walkway was born with the idea that it would feature our eventually-upcycled patio set.

The first order of business was to address the missing table top and seats.

My initial inclination was to head to Lowe’s, snag some narrower strips of wood, throw them on, and call it a day.

My husband, who is batting, like, 1.000 these days with ideas, offered to hunt for some free pallets. He mused it would be cheaper, and the wood strips would probably be thinner than anything we could find at a box store. Plus, plenty of pallets already have that old, beat up look that we love so much.

Of course, he was right.

After locating pallets on Friday, we spent the weekend prying them apart and pulling out old nails. It was honestly pretty labor intensive.

Truly, the cutting the wood down to size was probably the easiest part. Because of the table top lip previously held a glass top, I just rested each board there without specifically attaching them to the table. At some point, this table top will probably wear out, and removing the boards should be pretty simple at that point.

From there, my husband dug out a few rustic pieces of scrap wood from a previous project and attached them to the chairs via a few freshly drilled holes.

Now, we have a place to enjoy some impromptu garden feasts and maybe even a party or two. All that seems left to finish out this space is a string or two of twinkly lights. Our vintage iron patio set, which someone else dubbed trash, certainly looks a lot like treasure among the beauty of our burgeoning garden landscape.