Backyard Cabana Patio 200 sq. ft.

I was perfectly happy to leave this deck empty until shelter in place hit, at which point I was suddenly very motivated to transform it into a living space (no prizes for guessing why). 

Whether its indoor or outdoor, every living space is a room if it's sectioned off right. So to make it feel more like one, indoor/outdoor white curtains -- gauzy and billowy -- went up on an inexpensive brass tension rod. 

We square and diagonal lashed this to the beams with nylon thread; being that it holds on 4 points, it is secure even though the wind + karl the fog can be pretty strong. These curtains draw the eye up the way a wall would, and create a great sense of movement.

Calamansi lime (the best lime of all, from tropical Asia) and olive trees frame the corners in large secondhand china pots (I was purposeful about the blue and white ornate-ness as opposed to a more modern, single-color pot that could skew HGTV-ish.) In the opposite corner I tossed a lot of soil into a wine barrel and used that to grow 4 rounds of mustard greens. That barrel has since become home to lots of caterpillars I can never find and a now-adult plant I swear I never planted.

We are lucky that our neighbors are family. They've since moved away, but we had Friday night taco / Costco lasagna parties / TGIF dinners with them. They offered us vegetables from their hydroponic farm and we offered them pandemic sourdough, and it was all very symbiotic. 

Of note, for a little while the neighbors' peppers became a little Airbnb (their words, not mine) for a pair of morning doves to roost and start their family, so we have to be gentle when we go down the stairs. The dove parents take shifts, which is very modern of them.