Almost as soon as I posted about the sun porch on the weekend, I found the bolts to my patio table. So I dedicated my Sunday morning to reassessing how I had things set up there.

One of the big issues was the loss of my wooden plant stand. It meant my house plants were taking up a lot of floor space on the porch. Floor space I now needed to fit my table in.

I’d been looking at plant stands online, but they aren’t cheap. One exactly like my old one is about $200. And we just don’t have a lot of money left to spend on things like that right now.

But Dave, my shining knight, came to the rescue.

When we first moved into the townhouse, a previous tenant had lined a wall in the basement with homemade benches. Dave had taken them apart and turned them into a storage unit for the basement. However, it was too big to get down the basement stairs here. (The basement here is not much – very small and low ceilings). The shelves had been sitting at the side of the house since moving day, while he tried to figure out what to do with them.

As you can see, they are the perfect size for the porch. I dragged them in, cleaned them up…

• 

• 

After they were thoroughly inspected by Burton, I had them filled with plants in no time!

Adjacent to them, I set up the chairs and table.

It’s a smaller bistro set, so it’s perfect for the space.

In the corner where the broken plant stand was, put this lovely bamboo rocking chair. An old neighbour gave it to me several years ago for my yard at the townhouse. There was no room for it there, so it spent all its time in my bedroom, buried under a pile of clothes. It’s nice to have a proper space for it now. Mom and I are discussing the best way to make a seat cushion for it.

And I mentioned that our fish tank was currently in storage on the porch. Since it won’t be going anywhere until we finish renos on the living room, I decide to make use of it for plant storage too!

Here’s a little panorama of it all together.

I have to say…. it’s really hard to focus on work inside the house when I have a space like this calling me!