8/18/2015 - Thinking about Buying Patio Furniture?
If you are fortunate enough to have a large balcony, you’ll have room for a piece of outside furniture or two. Maybe you’re on the first floor of a rental property, in which case you might actually have a stone or two laid out just beyond your back door, leading onto a small backyard. Time to check out the local hardware emporium to see if you can get some discount patio furniture that will take advantage of the situation.
Then you move to your first home and you don’t have the money to get something permanent for the back yard and the deck, but you can bring along the smart choices that you’ve been able to make for your smaller spots. And in the long term you can plan about what kind of exterior you’re going to want to live with for a few years, a couple of decades or even a generation or two. Patio furniture might be the lost stepchild of modern design, because it has to be sturdy and functional, which is the opposite to delicate art-furniture and looks-good-feels-crappy modern design which is made to fit a décor rather than a bunch of people having beers around a barbecue.
You’ll still have to some selective shopping for your discount garden furniture, or outdoor patio pieces, or any number of names the stores have in order to seduce you. And they’ll want you to have you like a magazine subscriber, always adding onto your purchases with something they’ve specifically designed to go with what you’ve bought. It wasn’t just a desperate move for Kmart to hire Martha Stewart; she may not have had the quality associated with her but she did start a process of getting the buyer in to the patio section and then convincing them as Martha always done that they’ve gone a good thing in coming to this place. But don’t go the opposite direction, either; just because it seems to be a leftover from the Red Green show, that’s no guarantee that it’s sturdy. There are good designs out there that look and are rugged but at least have a smidgen of style that comes from their conceptions.
Strategic buying might be another way to start getting that full set of back yard furniture. Yes, they might laugh at you when they get plastic lawn chairs or tables with plexiglass tops for the winter, and even when they know that it’s only going to be in the garage until the snow melts, they will appreciate it all the more when you give out the additional matching pieces to them for next Christmas. And maybe you’ll be consequently invited to more barbecues with the family and other friends in the process.
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