Cover It Up, Why Don't You?

Sure, I could have gone to Sears or Bed, Bath and Beyond or one of those stores and purchased the one option available for outdoor furniture covers.  Usually, one store would have only one color to choose from and that would be beige or brown or dark green, blah, blah, blah.  I could have bought one of those, not considering aesthetics at all and just focusing on convenience and going along with the big stores idea of what my outdoor furniture covers should look like.  I think not!  If you have been reading my blog at all, you know by now - that is not my style!  Not only, is it not my style, but you know I'm going to spend hours upon hours looking and researching to try to find the best looking, the best price, the best style, etc. 

In the meantime, I left the plastic covers on that came with the chairs and they worked for awhile, but they made a lot of noise when the wind was whipping up and they started getting hole-y.  In the meantime, I left the stretch wrap on the table from when I got it thinking it would be better to leave the table covered and not expose the surface to the elements until I found a cover for it.  Well, that totally backfired on me and I'm here to say that I strongly advise against leaving stretch wrap on anything for too long.  Especially on things that are outside and baking in the sun for hours at a time for, oh, say a year or two.  I promised myself I wouldn't confess my stretch wrap sins but I find now that I can't help myself, so here goes.  My beautiful silver finish table was covered with stretch wrap when I got it.  I left it on there because I didn't have anything else to "keep it safe" with.  Do you know what happens to stretch wrap when left outside for long periods of time?  And then, you try to remove it? I do! It completely breaks apart into small flaky partially sticky pieces that are practically baked on the surface.  Suffice it to say, it took me probably five hours of very dirty, broken fingernails and painstaking work to remove almost all of the stretch wrap from the table.  In the last hour, as the sun went down and I was almost sitting in the dark, I got an idea to use packing tape to try to pull off the pieces.  It definitely helped but was slow going.  I must admit, I have a tiny bit left on there still, that I have to get back to.  I ran out of light and steam.  I'm telling you all this because I want to save you from going through the same thing. So folks, take my advice and remove all stretch wrap asap! I will never make that mistake again. 

Here's what the furniture looked like last spring and please focus in on the stretch wrap all over that table.  Also notice all of the holes in the table....not sure those made it easier or worse to get that stuff off. 

Okay, now that I have confessed and feel even more foolish having put it all in writing... let me get back to the covers!  I was determined to finally find covers that looked good, fit well and most importantly weren't expensive.  I wanted gray to go with my silver finished furniture and my decor in general.  I found this website OutdoorPatioPlus.com and they had gray covers at very reasonable prices so I bit the bullet and ordered them.  Even though, the return policy wasn't the best, restocking fees and all, but I finally pulled the trigger.  The brand I went with was Dayva.  I got an umbrella cover, a round table cover with a pull string and two high back chair covers.  I like everything separate, as opposed to the covers that go over a grouping of table and chairs.  Most of the time I just use one chair, so why deal with uncovering and recovering everything.  The high back chairs weren't in stock so I got the umbrella and table covers first.  They came very quickly.  They are light gray and they seem to be made well.  The chair covers came not too long after and they looked like the same color. I was excited.  I didn't put them on right away, so at least a week later I went to put them on and realized they weren't the same color!  Ugh!  They look more clayish, than grayish.  Bummer.  I decided to keep them because it wasn't terrible looking and frankly, I didn't want to deal with the hassle of sending them back, etc.  Trust me, if it looked really bad, I would have dealt with it.  The only real complaint I have, other than the mismatched color, is that all of the covers have some kind of film/residue all over the outside of them.  Not really sticky but, well, I can't think of a good word but I'm hoping it will wear off over time.  In case you wanted to know, the high back chair covers have an elastic "waist band" around the bottom instead of a draw string.  I think it works pretty well.  Long story short, my outdoor furniture is now better protected (hopefully) and looks pretty good too!  Tell me what you think?  I would love to hear your experiences with Dayva or other covers, just leave your comments on the bottom of this post.

Thanks for stopping by and Stay tuned for more creativity!