UPGRADING OUR BACKYARD SEATING AREA WITH FIRE PIT | ONE YEAR REVIEW

so it seems many of you out there are fond of this little space that we've made so it's since it's been a year of this build being completed we thought it was time to give you guys a close-up of How It's been doing and some little upgrades we want to do to amp up the space let's go [Applause] [Music] hey guys welcome back to another week here with us at the handy creators thank you so much for joining us so for those of you that may not know we have just hit the one year anniversary of when we created this seating area that we are currently sitting in yes and I would say that this is one of our favorite spots of our backyard and today we get many questions on how it has weathered through the months if it has been affected At All by the climate of where we live if we use it if it's comfortable I mean you guys have so many questions and I think the biggest thing about this whole project was that we weren't even gonna post that video because the quality was horrible and that was just recording Clips here and there but it's our best video it has turned into the fan favorite and yeah since it's been the one year anniversary we thought we would answer many of those questions and show you guys how it has held up throughout the last year we have been giving away some little plans that we did um of dimensions and supplies but we officially have the plans of how to create the space on our website for purchase if you guys are interested this will go into detail on how you can exactly recreate one of this size or if you want to adjust it to the size that you have available you can take the same steps we want to do some close-ups of how this has been doing over the year and we're going to be changing it around a little bit since this was the biggest project that we started with in our whole backyard I feel like parts of it don't mix in well with the rest of our backyard makeover which if you guys haven't watched those videos make sure to click the link above because we completely renovated a whole backyard by ourselves and daddy so let's start off we're going to show you everything how it looks we're going to start off with the tables then we're going to show you how the actual seating area has held up and the floor and pretty much every part of this build how it has held up throughout the last year what we would do differently and show you guys the changes that we're going to be making yeah so let's start off with the tables the tables was one of the last things that we did for this build and the truth of the matter was that at the time it seemed like a great concept but unfortunately Florida weather does not forgive the biggest issue we're having is it's falling apart even though we used all of the appropriate materials that were needed to build a table for this exterior structure unfortunately it has not held up over time so this is one of the biggest updates that we're going to be doing if you guys see here this back square has just completely lifted up and has bent due to the amount of humidity that exists here in Florida and the grooves and the connections of each wood have just not held up as you can see right here so this is one of the biggest changes that we're going to be doing we're going to rip these tables out completely and install new ones we're thinking a concrete design would look nice to bring to continue the concrete theme that this area has but we are not sure what color we're going to do it now let's move on and show you guys how the actual structure has held up so it's been a year and I am still not going to purchase cushions for this space and I don't think I ever will whether that's living in Florida we got so much rain and honestly you guys I'm just not the type of person to be putting cushions in and out of the house so the paper is that we put our seeds have held up beautifully I think maybe the connections within them need a good pressure wash and maybe some more caulk to give it a fresh look now let's talk about this stucco as you guys saw in their previous video we did this stucco in pieces this place is huge so we weren't able to do everything at once also we needed for the stucco on the size to completely dry before putting the stucco on top even though yes that worked beautifully if you guys really close up you could see the difference in color and tones from the stucco that was put on after same concept as when you do concrete floors if you do a piece of concrete today and you do another tomorrow somehow they never have the same color even though it's the same materials so we are going to be painting the stucco I know crazy we're going to stay with the White theme we love the white out here it kind of feels like I'm in Greece or something and it's very different from everything we have but we will be painting this white to give it a more fresh look and it kind of kind of close a bit of the pores that the stucco has so it's going to make it even easier for us to clean if you guys see this black stain right here this is because how these seeds get dirty every time it rains the water goes out by the connections This falls off extremely easy with some water and even a little scrub of a broom it stays completely white so if you get to do this whole stuck one one day and it looks all the same I wouldn't even recommend painting it the stucco is good quality okay so This falls off like nothing now we did have some issues and I know some of you guys commented on the previous video how maybe we should have put like a little wire under the stucco and yes we have been seeing that right here for example we have a very small crack but it's there so that is another reason why we want to paint it because it's going to protect it from cracking any further think apart from that everything else with the structure we've gone through two major hurricanes and this thing is in one piece honestly we were more worried about the pergola and stuff than this like this is not going anywhere we got a lot of questions and comments about our wet concrete and I'm gonna still stick by that if you do not have experience with your concrete don't be afraid to wet it a little bit more for it to last and for you to be able to work with it guys this has so much concrete that this is not going anywhere and mind you this is a seating area we got a lot of comments that oh the you losing strength that thing's going to fall apart guys this is to sit many chairs out there a build of wood this is concrete this is not going anywhere this thing is super super strong I think now let's talk about the floor which is going to be one of the very biggest problem areas I think for some people here and by other people she means me so when we were building this floor we looked at a lot of designs and this one was our favorite at the time but if I'm going to be completely honest from the moment we finish this floor I was not in love something about the amount of lines that this floor consists of bothers my eyes not only has it been something I've struggled with since we've built it there has also been spots where the grout that we did has not held up so if you guys see right here all of this front area has completely broken the grout and has filled with dirt and that has been a problem that we are hoping to fix apart from the grout breaking another issue that we've kind of had with the floor is that it doesn't have much contrast from the white of the actual seating structure so we've been looking at a few different options for the flooring and we are still a little bit as of what we want to do but we're going to start off with the simplest thing we're going to paint the floor see if we like it that way and if not then we will move on to other designs and other ideas but I think if we give this a nice dark maybe black charcoal color it will really help revive the area and also make a very very nice contrast with the white not only will we be painting this floor right here we will also be painting this front portion and around the entire seating area to really make it match and make this white stand out from any angle that you look at it now let's talk about the fire pit our method of using construction adhesive to put them together worked marvelously we use this a lot to rest our foot on and you guys like we do this all the time and this thing is not going anywhere it doesn't move again remember that we filled the inside as well so it is super super strong one problem that we do have and I'm going to give a shout out to my amazing husband for making this unique design on our fireplace is this beautiful crack right here maybe I'll record an answer here how my husband cuts the wood to put on their fire pit but this is his favorite spot as you can see and it's cracked the concrete block so we are gonna have to kind of tear that out and replace it with a new one and maybe buy him like a little thing where he could cut the wood and it's not on the actual design but apart from that it's beautiful nothing's falling apart nothing's moved everything stayed in place and inside these little bricks that we use have worked marvelous we did take you guys advice on putting a little rack on the inside for burning the wood and thank you guys it's worked great that really helped with the smoke so now we can sit here without you know being inside the sauna so let's start off by tearing these tables apart building the new ones and then painting the floor foreign [Music] you imagine there's something living under here let's go [Music] so now that we finally got these Woods Off the next thing we're going to do is put a piece of Durock we have some leftover Durock from when we did our kitchen build which if you haven't done so make sure to check the video above and the whole reasoning behind it is because if we leave this and just do a concrete pour on top of this this wood will eventually rot and we don't want that to happen because this is the support wood for the entire seating area so we're going to put a piece of Durock create the frames for both and then we can finally do our pour the best thing about Durock is how easy it is to cut it so right now we're just making the lime foreign utility knife and just run it across the board it might take a few swipes but you will see that it is very easy to cut now on the other side we'll just grab it finalize the cut and you have a piece [Music] and just to make sure that this definitely doesn't go anywhere we're going to be using the one and a quarter inch background screws [Music] [Music] okay so for those of you wondering what this top wood is for since there's not much support that we have that we can play with here what we're doing is adding this top wood that way we make sure that this stays Square once we make sure that all the edges are connected we go ahead check for squaring adjust and then we will add a screw here just to make sure that when we're doing the actual pour this isn't going anywhere both frames are done as you can see here we have a quite quite a little setup here but everything has its purpose I promise for this pour we're going to be using the mortar stucco mix Type S which will be linked below and the reason being is because we want this to come out as smooth as possible let's go ahead and start mixing the concrete and doing foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] we just removed the other frame and now it's time to pressure wash so this is the fun part yeah I'm excited to see how much dirt has built up over a year I mean we I have cleaned this but just with like a little broom and just the regular hose but to really give this like a deep clean foreign [Music] foreign so it's the next day and this is fully dry and ready to paint we are going to start off by painting the seats since they are the white part and this is the part we want to protect the most and then once that dries we'll move on to paint the floors now the only thing that we are going to be taping is this Edge right here as well as around the freshly built tables just because we don't want any white to get on there but as far as everything else we would just be painting it especially on the connections on the bottom because since we plan on painting the floor black we can easily cover up any extra paint with the new paint with that all that's left to do is to get started let's go foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you and just like that the whole area is painted we could honestly say that just that made this look brand new two things that we wanted to point out if you decide to build this number one make sure to check out the video on how we built this and two if you would like to paint it you are going to have to wait I think it's three months if I'm not mistaken because the way that stucco works is that it takes a very long time to fully fully cure and if you paint it before that time then the paint won't adhere as good so we're going to let this sit and dry before moving on to the next step which will be painting the floor foreign [Music] [Applause] while we do that we wanted to stop and give a huge shout out to Saker for sending us their two many chainsaws for review these chainsaws are extremely Compact and Powerful for their size they have both the options for a four inch chainsaw as well as a six inch chainsaw and both of these are extremely versatile for any tree trimming Branch cutting or even to cut down firewood their four inch chainsaw comes in its appropriate packaging with a battery a charger and miscellaneous supplies for maintenance while their six-inch chainsaw comes in its own carrying case with an included pair of gloves safety goggles two batteries a charger and also other miscellaneous applies for maintenance as well as two replacement chains we absolutely loved using both these electric chainsaws we trimmed down some trees in our backyard for firewood and all we can say is we are extremely surprised at the amount of power that these small machines have if you want to purchase yours make sure to check the link in the description below thank you once again Saker for sending us both of these amazing tools and now let's get back to the video foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] a very easy and quick project we were just gonna upgrade the side tables paint the whole area and call it a quits so we've gotten inspired along the way to keep doing stuff so in this part of the project that we didn't speak about at the beginning but here we go we are going to be adding a walkway um from where I'm standing which is the pergola to the actual seating area and we're going to be doing this of the concept we're going to be taking off the grass in this area right here we're going to be adding pavers and like rocks in between foreign [Music] is almost done stomping and we're just making sure that the floor is leveled the next step is going to be we're going to open up this weed control and we purchased this one at Lowe's my plan for this area is to give it two layers of this just in case there's like a hole or something on it maybe just to prevent it from like any grass really growing out of this area we're gonna be sticking these on the ground with these little hooks I've used this in the past and I don't love them but this is like the only alternative that I really saw so I mean there's gonna be a lot of weight on top of this so I really don't think it's going anywhere but here you go anyways everything's gonna be linked down below [Music] so we had measured where we're gonna have the pathway done and what I'm doing is I'm checking for square by grabbing my Square pressing it against the thing and then just adjusting this to where I need it now we're putting this because we want there to be a clear differentiation between the rocks and the pavers and the rest of the grass so the rocks and the paper the Rocks mostly are going to set up across this and then the grass will grow just to this side that way we avoid this mixing with each other [Music] thank you if you guys just saw that time lapse pretty much we put two layers of weed control this we made sure that both of them were the same height by measuring where they were up to this brick and we made sure that they were leveled here it was kind of going downwards so we added some dirt and we just made to we made sure to put a lot of little Clips on here to make sure it won't stand up anywhere so very easy straight to the point now let's get going to the next part [Music] we just finished both tables and if I were to tell you step by step what we did honestly I don't know but this is the finished product after many tries what we see in the work that we liked the most was once the whole table was painted black I came in with my white brush and just dabbed it everywhere trying to give it like that marble look as you can see there it gives it like a textured look and then Adriana came back with the black and then did these around again just to give it like a textured weathered stone look we just didn't want this to be another just solid color since everything in this area is just a solid color I don't know we like it let us know below if you think this looks cool if you have any other ideas that you think we could incorporate into this um the good thing about this is that we can paint this whenever we like if we get bored of this in about a few months we could just go ahead and repaint it and give it a whole new look so I think with that done we are going to get on to installing the rock glue we are going to dilute it with water spray it around wait about an hour and then spray it again just to make sure that at the end it's going to be as hard as a floor or so they say so also install some floor lights and some lights back here that we have for this area and give it the final touches before the grand reveal let's go foreign [Music] thank you thank you [Music]

Channel: The Handy Creators

Views: 55,181

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Id: sSAGtOb0Sfs

Length: 25min 59sec (1559 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 14 2023