I love indoor/outdoor rugs for their practicality, but the available patterns and colors these days make them even more irresistible. For a few years now, we’ve been planning to get an outdoor rug but decided to wait until we knew what size we needed for the ‘Zoo…and also because we could not find one that we both liked well enough. Well, the search is finally over!
As part of our backyard party makeover, we decided to spice things up on our back patio. We took advantage of a 20% sale and purchased the Improvements’ Tangiers outdoor rug in Spice {see what I did there…spiced it up?}, available here, to anchor the space (and hide the unsightly concrete cracks!). We chose Spice (orange) to provide contrast to the green lawn, but we also like how the warmth of the rug coordinates with the other warm colors in our existing patio furniture.
image from improvementscatalog.com
They have a variety of different sizes, including a 7’10” x 10’10”, which was absolutely perfect for our 10′ x 12′ patio. The size fits the patio seating area nicely while keeping the grill off to the side on the concrete so that there is less mess. Of course, one of the best things about this rug is that you can just hose it down, and after tracking dirt and grass clippings on it, we can attest to the fact that it sweeps and washes right off with minimal effort.
Cautionary note: I took these pics at high noon because I wanted to show how the rug looks in both shade and bright sunlight. Thankfully we have two umbrellas that made it a bit easier on the eyes and didn’t wash out the pics!
In case you haven’t noticed, we aren’t afraid of bright, bold color, and the Tangiers comes in a number of colors we liked. In fact, we bought a smaller version in Green for the kitchen!
My husband accidentally sprayed it with greasy water when he was washing our cast iron skillet {#baconlovers}, and I promptly blotted the stains with a clean paper towel, applied dish soap to the spots, allowed it to sit for 15 minutes, gently scrubbed with a soft toothbrush in the direction of the fibers {the cleaning instructions say no scrubbing because it may damage fibers, but the blotting/soaking wasn’t doing the trick}, hosed it off until no more soap suds appeared, and then left it to dry in the sun. No more spots, and the fibers seem to be okay! We’re not sure if this would have worked on an older stain, but we are very satisfied with how easy the Tangiers rugs are to clean! I took this pic after cleaning up the grease incident!
Now back to the patio. We’ve gone from blah…
to ahh, that’s more like it. So much better. 
Plus, the cats love lounging on it, and it feels fantastic to be able to walk out on the patio barefoot. It’s a fiesta for the eyes and the feet! Call me crazy, but I just might go back for thirdsies and get one of these rugs for the living room. Total game changer! The bistro set is from Target; the red umbrella and the red and green chairs are from Sam’s Club, all bought a few years ago in the city. #studentsalary
We also bought these cheap Adirondack chairs from Big Blue and Big Orange (same price but different color options available at different stores meant trips to both to get the colors we wanted). We wanted to have additional seating outside since our patio only seats four people right now. Eventually we hope to add a fire pit to this grouping of chairs that are circled up around, well, nothing.
Like I said before, we like it bright. If you’re looking carefully, you’ll note we have an unusual “sod” stack in the back corner, which is our repository for grass dug up from the yard to make room for the garden we planted (note the cedar beds in the background). Details on that to come!
Back on the back patio, we also added a storm door because we kept having water pool in our kitchen after heavy rains. Now we have no more surprise puddles in the middle of our floor, and the baseboards aren’t getting soggy anymore either. Very good indeed.
Overall, we’re feeling pretty happy with the way the backyard is shaping up, but especially the patio. We may never make it to Tangiers, but having a little bit of it here in Florida sure is nice. 🙂
KaZoo Party of Two 