14 affordable outdoor and patio essentials that'll transform your backyard for summer: Side tables, patio lights and more
Giving your backyard a makeover doesn't have to be a major project — or a major expense, either. Sometimes, it's the small changes (or a good deep clean) that can make the biggest difference. The goal here isn't to completely overhaul the area — it's to create an outdoor space that feels welcoming without spending beyond your budget.
With a few affordable upgrades, your backyard can go from "meh" to a fantastic hosting space for summer. Whether that means switching up the lighting, adding some extra shade or finally tidying up those corners you've been ignoring, we've rounded up 14 products to help you do just that. The best part? They're all under $200.
A table and a cooler? Yes, please. This dual-function side table is the perfect addition to backyards that see plenty of summer BBQs and hang outs. All you have to do is fill it with ice (and your favourite beverages).
Keep your pathways illuminated with this set of eight solar lights. They'll automatically turn on at dusk and off at dawn, so all you have to do is stake them into the ground.
This chainsaw is compact, lightweight and cordless, which will make it a little easier to prune trees, cut firewood or get your next DIY project done. It comes with a pair of work gloves and safety goggles to keep dust and wood chips out of your eyes.
Whether you want to hide unsightly trash bins, an AC unit or create an area for privacy, this slatted screen ought to do the trick. If you want to make it look even better, get some climbing plants like clematis or honeysuckle and have them grow up and along it.
Keep your backyard in tip-top shape by plucking your weeds with this puller tool. It's extra long, so you won't have to bend over to get all the way to the root.
Interlocking deck tiles are a great way to give your deck a mini makeover without busting out the power tools. Just snap the joints together and voilà! You've got yourself a brand new patio floor. They're waterproof and can be cut to cover curved edges or oddly-shaped areas. This set comes with 10 tiles.
Keep your garden hose tangle-free with this hideaway pot. More affordable (and a lot cuter) than your typical hose box, you can keep your hose hidden, coiled up and ready for everyday use.
Here's a set of four tabletop citronella torches to keep the mosquitos at bay, not to mention add a little romantic ambiance to your backyard in the evening. One reviewer says they're 'easy to fill,' while another appreciates that they 'hold enough fluid to last many hours.'
Give your garden beds a refresh with this lawn edging tool. It'll help you create clean, crisp borders, which will make your yard look professionally maintained (even if it isn't).
Whether your backyard is south-facing or not, it never hurts to have a designated area for shade in the summer months. It's also waterproof, so it can provide some rain coverage too. It comes with everything you need to set it up, including carabiners, ropes and a carrying bag to store it in.
Sometimes, all it takes is a little elbow grease (or a pressure washer) to bring some life back to outdoor spaces. You can use this thing to blast away dirt, grime and mildew from patios, decks, fences and even some furniture sets.
Turn your lawn into a lush, grassy oasis with this travelling sprinkler. With adjustable diameter coverage, automatic shut-off and three speeds, you'll never forget to water your garden again.
Declutter your back patio with a stylish wood storage box. You can use it to stash pillows, toys, gardening tools — you name it. Throw a few outdoor pillows on top and it can be used as extra seating, too.
Here's a pair of semi-sheer curtains that'll provide a little privacy (and romantic vibes) to your porch or deck. It'll change the entire feel of your space, as well as provide a little protection from the sun. Curtain rods are sold separately.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Washington Post
31 minutes ago
- Washington Post
An astonishing new approach to ‘Frankenstein'
The 'Frankenstein' that roared to life in D.C. this past weekend marks a triumphant U.S. directorial debut for London-based theater savant Emily Burns, who'd already earned a measure of local attention for adapting the script for the 'Macbeth' that brought Ralph Fiennes to Shakespeare Theatre Company last spring. As in that intriguing but uneven exercise, Burns has chucked a night-dark classic and a brisk contemporary vibe into her authorial Cuisinart. But this time, with the writer-director not just remixing the story but shepherding the whole shebang, the resulting world premiere is a blistering success — unabashedly intelligent, sumptuously visualized, taut as an assassin's garrote. It's jump-scary psychodrama with a literary pedigree, served up in sleek prestige-TV style. If there's any theatrical justice it'll end up making piles of money on Broadway and the West End. We're still in Geneva circa 1790, still in Mary Shelley's shadow-shrouded tale of an Enlightenment-inspired wannabe scientist. The moral and ethical probings still circle around what exactly Victor Frankenstein (Nick Westrate) has been up to of late. But there's also the intimately personal question, more urgent now than ever, of what the fallout will be for Elizabeth (Rebecca S'manga Frank), Victor's adopted sister and eventual wife. You might reasonably guess that in a rewrite grounded in what the script says is 'psychologically now,' she'll end up being far more than a tragic second-banana figure. What you might not expect is how far and how firmly Burns will manage to shift focus to Elizabeth without entirely dismissing Victor as 'the real monster,' that tired old oversimplification. Or how much genuinely suffocating suspense she'll wring from the hows and the whys and the what-could-you-possibly-be-thinkings. We'll have none of the novel's epistolary, travelogue-y throat-clearings to kick off this brutally efficient retelling; no Arctic vistas, no random ice floe encounters. Burns launches things in smothering gloom instead, with moody surtitles and a moodier voice-over. (Tired devices, you might sneer, right up until they pay off in a hair-raising collision of remembered horror, real-time revelation and rapacious need.) Those opening atmospherics give way, suddenly and startlingly, to a titanic thunderclap and a strobed glimpse of what looks for an instant like your standard mad-scientist lab setup. (The design elements, courtesy of scenarist Andrew Boyce, costumer Kaye Voyce, lighting guru Neil Austin, sound artist André Pluess and projectionist Elizabeth Barrett, prove uniformly superb and enviably unified.) A quick tonal shift, more light, and we're in the soaring moonlit kitchen of the Frankenstein family's stately home, well past midnight on the stormy eve of the young couple's long-planned wedding. Then Burns's lean story edit derails not just the planned nuptials but everyone's entire lives: Victor's 10-year-old brother, William, reported missing in the opening exchanges, is confirmed dead. Which is when things get all 21st-century head-shrinky: Justine (Anna Takayo), the devoted family retainer framed for the murder in Shelley's version, implicates her own self in this telling, confessing to the crime out of a morbid conviction that her impatience with William's preadolescent rowdiness had driven him out of the house and into the real killer's path. And Justine's piercing need to atone for what she sees as unforgivably bad (surrogate) parenting is merely the first suggestion of the soul-searchings to come over at the Frankenstein place. Victor and Elizabeth and eventually their righteous wet nurse (Takayo again, chameleoning nicely) will dig into memories of childhood alienation, tales of shifting parental affections and confrontations around what being a decent mother even means. Or, crucially, a halfway-decent father. It's all grounded impeccably, both in key themes from the original text and in stark traumas Shelley navigated in real life: Her mother's death was a direct result of her birth, while her own son, not coincidentally named William, was ailing around the time of the novel's conception and dead by the age of 3. The author lost three other children in their infancy, too. No shortage of resonance in all that for this adaptation's explorations of what courage it takes to contemplate the making of a child, how hugely the process of creating life can go awry, how quickly the simplicities of youth can curdle into the monstrosities of adult humanity. Frank's hypnotically sure performance as Elizabeth is the staging's bright lodestar. Her voice is caramel and cloves, expressive even in Burns's lighter modern phrasings, downright beguiling in more lyrical passages taken whole from Shelley's period text. Her body language speaks more resonantly yet: Stillness can equal immense authority onstage, and this actor's economy of movement generates black hole gravity, making larger gestures all the more seismic when they erupt. Takayo's is a nervier and more restless presence, as is Westrate's — aptly enough given the essential fecklessness of this adaptation's still-charming Victor. He's twitchy and shifty and impossible to repose any real faith in, this thoroughly modern man-child, which is one potent way Burns sustains the evening's exquisite narrative tension. Grounding a character's evasions and fictions in a physical vocabulary that screams 'I cannot be trusted' is a sly tactic for making an audience second-guess what it already knows to be a horrifying truth. That truth, of course, involves what constitutes monstrosity, and in whose eyes. Burns's last great coup is the climactic reveal that finally settles the question of whether this tale of a grotesque and murderous villain bears any resemblance to fact. It's not quite a spoiler to acknowledge that a Creature does make an appearance — actor Lucas Iverson gets a playbill credit, after all — but the specifics of that answer and the delicacy in how Burns and company navigate the moment elicited audible gasps at Sunday's matinee. Like nearly every rich and gorgeous element of this 'Frankenstein,' it's flat-out astonishing. Frankenstein, through June 29 at the Klein Theatre. About 2 hours 20 minutes, including an intermission.
Associated Press
32 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Journalism opens as the Belmont favorite. Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty is the 2nd choice
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. (AP) — Kentucky Derby runner-up and Preakness winner Journalism opened as the 8-5 favorite in the Belmont Stakes when post positions were drawn Monday for the final leg of the Triple Crown. Derby winner Sovereignty was set as the second choice on the morning line at odds of 2-1 and drew the No. 2 post. Journalism, near the outside with the No. 7 post, is the only horse running in all three Triple Crown races. 'He's been kind of the same horse since July of last summer,' trainer Michael McCarthy said. 'He does everything you'd ask a good horse to do: He eats well, trains well, acts well. I thought through the last six, seven weeks here, his energy's been the same throughout.' Sovereignty is back after owners and trainer Bill Mott opted to skip the Preakness and run the Belmont on five weeks of rest, and things have gone swimmingly since he arrived at historic Saratoga Race Couse. 'We've been very lucky with everything that's gone on sine he's been here,' Mott said. 'He's been moving well over the track.' Sovereignty and Journalism in the field set up this Belmont, the second at Saratoga while renovations are made to its usual home on Long Island, to be a rematch between the first two Triple Crown winners who were also first and second the Derby. 'He's improved, as I think as many of these horses have,' Mott said of Sovereignty. 'I think this entire group, if you look at their form and the way they've developed over the course of this year, I think they've made steady progress and it should be an interesting race.' No. 6 Baeza, who finished third in Kentucky on the first Saturday in May, opened at 4-1. Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert's Rodriguez, who was scratched from the Derby because of a minor foot bruise and held out of the Preakness, was next at 6-1 and will leave the starting gate from the No. 3 post. The field of eight horses also includes No. 8 Heart of Honor, tied for the longest shot on the board at 30-1 after finishing fifth in the Preakness. New to the Triple Crown trail are No. 1 Hill Road (10-1), No. 5 Crudo (15-1) and No. 4 Uncaged (30-1). Journalism, who was favorited in the Derby and the Preakness and at the moment is the top 3-year-old in the country, looks like the horse to beat. 'Saratoga is very good for horses,' McCarthy said. 'He seems a little bit re-energized up here. We're looking for a wonderful renewal of the Belmont here on Saturday.' ___ AP horse racing:
Wall Street Journal
34 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
Colonoscopy Prep Is Worse Than IKEA
I'm on day three of my colonoscopy preparation. You read that right. Day three. Had this been knee surgery, I would have been in and out the same day. This is a routine colonoscopy—the kind you're supposed to get every 10 years. Last time, the preparation was minimal: Start drinking a gallon of laxative solution at 6:00 the night before the surgery and try to finish it within two hours.
