Revitalizing Tropical Living Spaces - Renovating an old abandoned balcony

It has been a while since I have been here. As I mentioned in some of my earlier posts, this revitalizing project is going to take quite some time and I’d update sparsely. I am mostly doing it on my own and I’d only ask for help when I truly need it. I only finished moving my stuff and was able to focus on this project again, totally out of the blue this time. In the past, I was looking for inspiration and since I had way too many, I am now focusing on executing the ideas. So, the first spot that I am taking care of is my balcony.

This old balcony is abandoned and as you can see from the picture, it looks totally a mess. The plants aren’t taken care of, the pots are everywhere and the dirt also stained the ceramics. When I was a kid, my family used to do our evening picnics here. I remembered that we could see the sky full of stars and was often beautiful. Then, as I grew up, the space was turned into a hanging laundry area and mostly abandoned.

These days, since moving here, I plan on creating an area where I can sit down, even work from and enjoy my afternoon coffee. It’s quite a breezy outside and in some months like June or July, the sun is beautiful, it has that unmatched golden hours. At night, this used to be a spot for me to photograph the moon and this place would be like that. So, the functionality of the place changes depending on who lives in the house. These days, since I am the one occupying the whole place, I want to turn the space to match how I like it and be a lot more functional. I do want every space in my house to have its functionality and a space where I and other people that come visit use it.

And, the first step to renovation is always cleaning. I didn’t realize that the place needed so much cleaning. The dirt sort of sticks to the ceramic and it seems beyond saving. Though I am still cleaning it as you can see below, I decided that I would just use either wooden tile to cover it or some type of synthetic grass that could be the base for the flooring.

Before

After

The Tile Before & After

I use citric acid to clean the tile and finally some of the dirt that sticked are gone but honestly, cleaning all of them would take more time than what I plan, so, covering them with either wooden tile/ synthetic grass would workbetter.

As for the plants that you see, some of them can still be saved and the pots can be used to plant other plants. I am mostly planning to do flowers and herbs as well as some easy to plant vegetables that can grow where the sun is directly on the balcony. It’s a little tricky to plan things around here because the sun directly faces the balcony and there are some plants that can’t handle such sunlight. Though now the cleaning is only 40% done, before the month ends, I already make a goal to finalize the cleaning and emptying the pots. Then in July, I can already start with repainting the whole place, most importantly my room and this balcony that’s connected to it.