Outdoor Seating Challenge

So as I said yesterday none of our current outdoor furniture was working in our new pool deck space.  Currently the plastic Adirondacks chairs we have are working but they won't be there for long...

While scouring pinterest, blogs and the internet in general I came upon a few ideas.  Some were crazy expensive.  This is one of my ultimate favorites...and it could totally be ours for the mere price of $4,113 which is SO not in our budget (and pretty much never will be until the kids are grown, through college and married...and remember I'm impatient).

There were some cool DIY options like this crazy cool one from Thrifty Inspirations which cost a total of $313 with the pillows.  I liked this idea but after all the hard work Scott went through with the deck I didn't want to lay another project in his lap right away and figured he deserved some time off.

So when I happened upon this sectional on Walmart's website I thought we could have a winner.

It's a little less "pop of color" that I was looking for but the price was right at $399 (originally $499 but it was on roll back that week).  I did a little more searching and found some actual pictures from real people who bought it (and loved it by the way) and pretty much was sold when I saw this one from Anything Pretty.  I love how just a few throw pillows and accessories totally make this thing pop.

Now the tough part...selling Scott on the idea.  I totally went into my salesman mode and presented all my hard work/research and the pros and cons of all of them.  He actually really liked the idea and the fact that the most effort he would have to exert would be to help me put the thing together.  BUT he figured we had spent enough money putting the pool and deck in (true) and that (and I quote) "Unless you can make money appear out of thin air" we should wait until next year to make this purchase.  

Well those words were just like waving a red flag in front of a bull.  I immediately thought in my head (and may have said it out loud) "Challenge Accepted!" in my best Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother impersonation (love that show!).

I racked my brain for how I could make $400 appear out of no where and realized there were items in our house that we completely overlooked when putting on our garage sale.  Some of them we had even agreed should be ear marked for our next garage sale - so I figured I would just move up the timeline of when we sold them :).  

Within a week I sold our double bike trailer that we don't use anymore (this was great for in town, but in the good ol country with dirt roads it just threw dirt up in the girls faces and since then we have gotten a tag along bike for Lilly and a bike seat for Nolee) our water softener (we upgraded to a culligan because our water is SO nasty), the wicker love seat from our front porch (there was just too much furniture on it) and Lilly/Nolee's old crib and dresser.

The crib and dresser were really really nice, but just not our taste anymore.  The crib was actually one of those that converts from a crib, to a toddler bed to a full size bed.  The crib and toddler bed were awesome, but we tried to convert it to a full size bed and weren't impressed at all...surprisingly it was kind of unsturdy and it just looked weird.  Plus we sold the set to this really nice guy who drove an hour to our house after working until 6:30 in the morning to pick it up for his gal who saw it on craigslist...with no complaints what so ever.  He was such a sweetheart and you could just see how excited he was about his first baby (they were having a boy).  It always makes me feel so good when you can sell stuff to people like that.

I ended up making well over the $400 that I needed to make appear out of thin air :).  When I told Scott I had made the money in less than a week he just shook his head at me and told me he would never doubt me again (actually he may have said he would never challenge me like that again because it kind of scared him what I could do when I put my mind to it...but we all hear what we want to hear right?).

I ordered the sectional last week (and thank goodness I ordered it when I did because it is back up to $499 now) and got an email update yesterday that it is in MI (yaaaa!).  I opted for the free ship to store option and am patiently waiting (checking my phone every 5 minutes) for the text letting me know it's at the store awaiting pick up.  I can't wait to see it all set up and on our deck :)!