Building an outdoor sectional

We have a large deck that we built out of ipe about eight years ago. We have furnished it with a variety of adirondack chairs and dining tables but nothing has felt right. A few months ago we stumbled across the Ana White Simple Modern outdoor sectional and thought it would be a great fit for our deck!

There are two separate designs that make up the sectional, corner units and armless sections. To get a feel for how the design comes together we built one of each out of basic white wood from the Home Depot. Each one took us a day to cut and build and we thought they came out great!

We took these two down to our deck to check for scale and decided on three corner units and six armless sections. We also decided to build them out of an Indonesian hardwood called red balau to play off the ipe deck and also last a lot longer in the hot California sun!

There's nothing like a test drive

Is this the rainiest October on record? We had a gloomy, foggy summer that we kept thinking would clear and blast us with a heat wave. It didn't and we didn't order the roof. September and October are the locals' summer months in San Diego. These months are usually warm and sunny with big empty beaches free of tourists. But they weren't, they were misty and wet. So between a cloudy summer and rainy autumn here we are thankful for two alternating weekends of sunshine during which we roofed our little hearts out.

I grew dinner

Welcome back to our regularly scheduled programming. I'm not posting another thing about that four letter word that starts with an R until it's done, seamed up, and there's no more steel on my lawn. Did you know I have a vegetable garden? Yeah, I forgot. Totally. I happened to notice it today and found quite a surprise, this Chinese eggplant, a bunch of scallions and a hot pepper. Thanks garden for surviving without me.