Christi: Hello. Welcome back to my channel. My name
is Christi Lukasiak. My dogs are barking. Well today I am going to show you... I'm going
to take you on a little journey that started many, many months ago. So my backyard is one
of my favorite places in my house. It's one of my favorite places in the world and it
has desperately needed a makeover for the last couple of years. So this video I am going
to take you from the before to the after. I'm clearly sitting in the after, I'm clearly
a little bit sweaty, but I feel like this is a video that lots of you have requested,
so hopefully you will love it. Please make sure that you subscribe to my channel, turn
on your post notifications so you know when I'm posting. And I want to hear from you what
your favorite part of this backyard makeover is. And if you like it better now versus before.
Okay, we are going to get started. So let's go back in time. Shall we?
Christi: Okay. So all of this landscaping needs clean
done. (silent). Oh, why hello. It has come to my attention that I need to use... Where
is it? My wet vac or my shop vac. Oh, God, look at my garage. You guys, I'm telling you
I'm going to be a hoarder. I'm going to be on Hoarders, but I need to go down and clean
up some of the gross parts down there before I can do this. So this is like a full on hardcore
makeover. And I have trash bags because my neighbor... I love my neighbor. We're actually
traveling with them later this summer, but they are good friends of ours, but he's nuts
because he refuses to pay, I don't know, the $70 a year for garbage removal. So he takes
all of his trash to his own trash yard, I don't even know what it's called, dump yard.
I don't know. But anyway, he's taking away some of my stuff, so I need to gather it up
and drop it off.
Christi: This is going to be fun. I don't like cleaning.
I like decorating. That's kind of my thing, but I have to clean before I can decorate.
So we're going to go and clean. I just went inside. I'm trying to roll my shop vac. I
just went inside and my cat's sad. He wants to come outside, but he can't because yesterday
he ate a mosquito. He's not allowed to come out. (silence). We have one, one has made
it down. Now I have all this to do. Whaa. Oh, hello. We're back. We're back a couple
of days later, still working on the outdoors. I'm trying to get as much finished for my
outdoors before we leave for France as humanly possible. You guys get to see my dirty garage.
And I went to [inaudible 00:04:11] and I got some candles because I'm going to try to do
a candle scape along my fireplace. So I have no idea if that's going to look cute or not,
but we're going to try it. And then I think there's been something delivered to my front
that's for the outside. So we're going to go see that.
Christi: So I'm going to share some of these things
with you, because I need to get this outside done before I leave. And there's other things
I need to be doing today, but the siren call of decorating is happening. And so I'm like,
"I'm going to go do that." So we're going to do this for a few minutes. So walk with
me. Oh, I forgot my phone, because I like to listen to a podcast while I'm out there
working. Let me grab that. So you may wonder why are you wearing a sweater, Christi? It's
the summer. Well, the answer to that question is, I don't know because it's summer. But
I suppose it's because I live in Pittsburgh and last night it was like 45 degrees high,
that's very nervy. I can't even believe the nerve of that. So I've never known what to
do up there. These white things I just threw up there because I took them off a wall, but
this is always in a point or a bane of my existence, I should say.
Christi: So I'm going to actually try a candle scape
and see how that works. See how that looks. Yes, I know. It's also messy. Okay. So we're
seeing if we like this, it's a little bit better. I don't know about that aqua candle
might need to switch that out. This rug I laid down, it needs to flatten and obviously
I need to switch these. I'm switching these to a blue with a striped pillow. So I'm making
under here just a little bit more like a living space. So we'll get there. We're getting there.
Slow baby steps. Okay. So let's talk up here on my porch for years I've had pots that I
haven't loved. Very windy. I decided that I wanted to do more urns and I found this
one. See, I found that blue one and I loved it because it's very French, so got some weeds
in there. Don't worry. I'm going to put some good stuff in. But I found this blue urn and
I really loved it, but I can only find one. And then this year I found all of these just
pure white urns, which is fine.
Christi: But it's a little like they don't have the
same vintage feel obviously as the other one. So me being Becky Home-Ecky decided that I
was going to work on these urns and antique them. So you can see I've been working...
I feel like this is... I feel like I own a garden center. So I've been antiquing urns
and like that one back there, that one's really dark. This one came like that. This one's
a little bit lighter. I think I prefer the way this one looks, but then I did these two.
This one's much lighter. I didn't get in these grooves. And this one's much darker and I
actually like the way this one looks. So I need to go back through and fix this one up.
And then I'm going to do maybe a time-lapse video and show you or maybe a to do video
how I did this, so that's pretty easy. If you want to get crafty or Becky Home-Ecky
[inaudible 00:08:05], you can do it too. (silence). So to do this I am using, what is this? Can
you see it?
Christi: Valspar, it's their antiquing glaze, super
easy. I just put on as much as I want and then I use a wet cloth to wipe it off. And
you can layer it, you can do a lot, you can do a little. I mean, I tend to get out of
hand sometimes and then I have to really wipe it off. But the nice thing about it is it
doesn't really matter what it looks like, because you're supposed to be like antiquing
it. So if one's darker than the other, fine because maybe that pot's older. (silence).
So this summer my family, without Clo, I know it was very sad. We spent a good bit of time
in France. It was about three weeks, two and a half, three weeks. And I feel like my new
backyard is very French inspired, but the funny thing is, is I started buying this and
putting it together far before my trip to France. So maybe I was just feeling all the
French vibes. Do you feel like it's France?
Christi: Someone said South Beach. Ah I feel like it's
France, like it's the South of France not the South Beach, right? Do you agree? I feel
like, yes. I will link where I bought as much as I can below. A lot of it I forget where
it came from, that's not true. I'll just go back and look, I will link everything that
I bought below. So if you want to copy my backyard, please imitation is the most sincere
form of flattery, have at it. And then send me a pictures, because I totally want to see.
So thank you so much for watching this video. Please leave a comment below and let me know
if you would jump off the rock and don't forget to subscribe to this channel, turn on your
post notifications and I will see you next week. Bye.