Our Rental Home Patio Makeover

This post was sponsored in part by Wayfair, but all creativity, photography and copy is my own.

It’s no secret that decorating a rental home can be a real challenge! When we first moved into our current home (military housing), I felt so aesthetically stifled I left things in boxes for months. When I finally felt motivated, we tackled decorating the bedroom first. Then, we conquered a living room makeover since we spend the most time there. Our house has come together pretty well (a guest bedroom makeover post is coming, too!), so we figured it was time to tackle our outdoor space.

To be honest, we live in military housing and it doesn’t always have the best reputation, particularly when it comes to outdoor spaces. Our back patio had become a dumping ground for our sneakers, dog leashes, beach gear and a rogue door mat. It wasn’t anything pretty to look at, that’s for sure!

Our space isn’t big enough to fit a large seating area (one day I’ll have one of those beautiful patio sets!), but we knew we wanted to utilize the space in a better way, and at least dress it up a bit.

Since my mom has been in town, she helped us with this project to create a space we look forward to spending more time using. In fact, we’ve already been out there quite a bit using the grill, which I’m ashamed to admit usually sits dormant. 

Here is a peek at what our patio looked like before the makeover (behind Judy and I) and the day our rug arrived — kind of bare, not really a space we had any use for aside from wiping our feet off and heading inside. As you can see, a few random things were just…accumulating. Certainly nothing to blog about! 😉

You might be shocked to learn that we only used two new items to make this patio space come together — a bright rug and a deck box. Everything else is stuff we already had in our home or in storage that we transferred outside to make the space a bit more of an oasis.

I was always kind of lukewarm on outdoor rugs, because our dogs are professional mud trackers. It’s one of their many talents, so I felt like money was wasted on something nice if they were just going to smear dirt everywhere! As it turns out, the trick is getting a rug that masks the mess and this pink + orange outdoor rug is A WINNER.

The deck box was a necessary component, even though it’s not the most visually appealing. Why? Because it holds a TON of stuff and keeps the geckos out, which is a legitimate issue here in the islands, because they poop everywhere and on everything. GROSS! We keep our dive flippers, snorkel gear, shoes and beach towels inside. It’s great, because we can just load up and go without having to drag gear and/or shoes through the house. Plus, it’s kind of a great place to sit to put shoes on before heading out for a run or walk. 

The poufs we can pull in and out easily since our living room is right inside our door, so they’re great little stools to sit on if we’ve got company or just want to enjoy a cocktail outside. We attempted adding chairs, but it really made the area look cluttered with the storage door (pictured partially above) and our glass slider, so this is a great solution for this particular patio setup!

I absolutely love how this space turned out and it certainly brightens up our backyard set-up. It always kind of amazes me how just adding a few things can really transform an area!

Because of how our parking is situated, we actually walk into our house this way, so having something so bright and cheerful be the first thing I see when I come home has been really nice. 

So let’s chat – do you have an outdoor space at your house? If so, how did you decorate it?