Great Spring DIY Building Projects

Time to Start Spring DIY Building Projects

Spring is a great time to relax doing DIY projects around your home and outdoors. Our customers have so much talent and creativity and spring is a great time to start on projects that you can use year-round. Some of our customers are still dealing with snow and storms, but some afternoon planning for spring DIY building projects can take away cold weather blues.

We share with you today some ideas that we are adding to our to-do list this spring. Spring is the perfect time for some of those home projects you’ve always wanted to do. After you clean up your yard from winter, you can take advantage of the warmer weather to build projects that will create many memories for your family, from ponds to patios, screened porches to garden beds, and we give you some wonderful ideas to have fun building this spring.

Build a Brick, Tile or Concrete Patio

Most backyards or grassy areas are uneven and not very suitable or stable for lounge chairs, dining tables and chairs. A great spring project can take an area and with a few hours to a weekend of work and transform it into a beautiful patio.

Use your imagination, because many building options make for a beautiful patio. Think of a brick patio laid in an interesting pattern with a sand base and bender board surround, or pressure treated wood base with tile installed on top, or a sand base with natural stone such as flagstone in gorgeous earthy colors.

The best building option for ease, cost, and longevity is probably a concrete patio created with different sized pavers to give it so added interest. Concrete is smooth, easy to clean, durable, and stands the test of time. You can also pour a concrete patio with a pressure treated wood frame, wire underlayment, and then paint your concrete in color of your choice. There are so many great outdoor concrete painting ideas and materials to choose from these days that can give your concrete patio a truly custom look.

Screened Porch DIY Project

Many places across the country have mosquitos and other flying insects as a problem as the weather gets warmer. There are two solutions to the situation that will help make your backyard deck or patio a more relaxing place to be instead of swatting at bugs as the weather grows warmer. A fast and simple solution is a pull down screens attached to the top of your patio or deck overhang, they are weighted on the bottom and create a pretty good bug barrier.

A more extensive screened deck solution is framing your porch in such a way that you can add snap in screens. This method usually means having a 3–4-foot base wall and then creating partitions with vertical beams. We did this on our master bedroom porch and I can just snap in 4′ x 5′ screens when the weather turns warm and the bugs are about.

Refresh & Clean Your Outdoor Furniture

Winter weather is harsh on outdoor furniture especially if you don’t cover it with vented furniture covers. In harsh climates it’s good to store your outdoor furniture in your garage or shed during the winter months, but some of us don’t have the space or don’t want to heft and move the furniture at the end of the fall season.

Hopefully you have at least stored the cushions so they don’t need to be refreshed. If you haven’t stored your cushions indoors during the winter using an enzyme-based stain remover can do wonders in refreshing your cushions and making them look new again. Using a scrub brush and an enzyme cleaner can bring wicker back to looking new again too.

If you have wrought iron furniture it good to power wash and wire brush the painted surface and give it a new coat of paint every 2-3 years. Doing good upkeep on wrought iron furniture will keep in such good shape so that it can be passed on to another generation.

Clean Your Gutters & Downspouts

During the winter a lot of debris can accumulate in your gutters and downspouts and spring is a great time to clean them out. If you have screen guards on your gutters this becomes a little more involved of a project requiring a ladder and few more tools.

If you don’t have gutter guards you can use an expanding wand gutter cleaner to get the job done. If you find that more elbow grease is needed then an expandable ladder that hooks onto the roof is a great investment. I’ve used a gutter scoop to get out the worst of the mess and then I use a pressure washer with an extension rod to flush out the remaining debris.

If your downspouts are clogged, which can cause roof rot and staining of your gutters, this is what has worked for us. Extend your ladder to be above the downspout. Remove any obvious blockage, we had a bunch of silt. Then I used a wire clothes hanger to push the debris down, next I followed this with using my battery power leaf blower right over the opening, and followed up with using my pressure washer to move the rest of the debris out of the downspout. Welcome to no more clogged downspouts.

DIY Window Box Herb Garden

At Shed Windows and More we carry a number of different types and sizes of flower boxes or window boxes. A flower box outside your kitchen window makes herbs really accesible and also makes for a pretty view out your kitchen window.

Many types of herbs lend themselves to flower box planting, such as oregano, thyme, basil, chives, marjoram, parsley, and sage. Not only does this give your windowsill a spot of color but you can also enjoy the fragrance from your windowsill herbs.

Let In Light with DIY Wall of Windows

Shed Windows and More has just started carrying sliding glass doors and also framed window door panels to extend your sliding glass door area without adding weight to your sliding glass door. You can also use our framed window door panels on their own to create a wall of windows to let in extra light or to act as passive solar heating for a west or south facing room.

Think of a 6-foot slider glass door with a framed window panel on each side, so that you have a 12-foot expanse of window. What a way to show off a view, open up your room, and bring nature inside your house! Both of these new products aren’t available online yet, so if you are interested just give us a call.

Build a DIY Privacy Barrier

Sometimes you just want to have a little more privacy in your backyard and DIY privacy barrier can be the answer. If your yard is feeling too exposed to the street or other neighbors, a planted privacy barrier is a beautiful way to gain a quiet retreat in your own backyard. Hedges have been used for centuries as a way of dividing property in a beautiful way.

No need for permits or building materials, just an post hole digger, auger, or electric auger will help you make a fast work of growing a privacy barrier in a day. We suggest choosing plants, bushes, or trees native to your area and not needing a lot of upkeep or water. There are so many evergreen trees, flowering trees and bushes that stay green year-round. You could even plant an herb barrier using plants such as rosemary, angelica, black elderberry, cardamom, catnip, dill, fennel, lemon balm, lovage, meadowsweet, pennyroyal, sweet woodruff, and many more that are known for their height and how quickly they grow.

Have fun this spring with your DIY building projects and please share your finished projects with us at Shed Windows and More by emailing your photos to info@shedwindowsandmore.com.