The balcony transformation

We moved into our flat almost three years ago. It wasn't in bad condition when we moved in but slowly we have made a few changes here and there, as you do! However, one area that we have pretty much ignored was the balcony. We just never go out there and it was a pretty ugly balcony, so we never really wanted to go out there!

We decided a little while ago that even though the balcony isn't very big, we wanted to do something to make it nicer. Seth suggested that maybe we grow some vegetables out there - I laughed at that idea! Anyone who knows me knows that I am hopeless when it comes to growing or cultivating any plant of any kind. (Does anyone remember when I almost killed off Mum's hanging basket by watering it with windscreen wash?). Being as though we don't have a garden for Caleb to play in (although we make up for that by spending quite a lot of time at the park!), we decided that we would turn the balcony into a nice little area for him. We had pretty much decided on getting him a water play table for his Birthday so it made perfect sense.

I forgot to take proper before photos of the balcony but trust me, it was pretty nasty! I got rid of some of the junk that was out there from when we took our fireplace out nearly TWO YEARS AGO (yeah, we hadn't sorted that yet. Don't judge). I swept it all up and brushed the nasty bricks down so that they were free of spider webs and other lovely things.

 Seriously, surely everyone in the world knows how much I hate spiders so even I can't believe that I did that but luckily enough for me, there were no spiders in the webs! The next evening while Seth was at a youth activity I painted the bricks. It took around three coats to get them to look nice. I was going to paint them red but I couldn't find a red brick paint that I liked so I decided on keeping it white.

The floor of the balcony isn't that attractive so I decided that needed to be covered in some way to look better. I bought some foam hopscotch tiles and put them down on the floor to add some nice colour and to make it look better. It actually took a lot longer than I thought it would but maybe that's because I'm a bit of a perfectionist and every area of the balcony had to be covered so I spent ages measuring, cutting and sticking to make it fit just so! It's not perfect though so don't look too closely at the photos!

I'm pretty pleased with the end result. It looks so much better than it did and while it's not massive, it's nice that Caleb has a little outdoor space now.