DIY: Building a Covered Patio with The Awesome Orange

Did you spend the summer sitting in the backyard dreaming about adding a covered patio or a pergola? Assuming you’re handy, maybe you even spent time thinking about bypassing a local contractor and doing it yourself (well, yourself and your BFFs, who’ll work for burgers). Naturally, as the summer crept along and your dream turned into an itch, you probably found yourself looking at do-it-yourself websites to see if you could, in fact, do it yourself.

Sadie Mae John The Awesome Orange
September 12, 2019

At this point, one of three things might happen:

You trust your skills and decide to give it the old college try.
You’re intimidated. Those DIYers are all so confident and make it look so easy. Understandably, filled with self-doubt, you put the project off till next summer.
You have a good laugh at yourself before calling Connor the Contractor.

Today I’m dealing with number two and what it’s really like being a DIYer taking on a brand-new challenge. Enter The Awesome Orange.

I’d exchanged a number of emails with Sadie Mae, the hands and brains behind The Awesome Orange, and knew we wanted to find a way to work with her. Reviewing Sadie Mae’s work on her blog and Instagram, I had no trouble seeing she was ambitious, energetic, and imaginative. Those are all great qualities in a brand partner; but perhaps even more importantly, she’s honest and careful. Sadie isn’t shy about admitting when she makes a miscalculation or needs to phone a friend.

After discussing a number of projects, we decided to update her backyard with a beautiful covered patio. It was an exciting learning experience for the both of us, and the end result is an impressive patio cover that completely transformed her backyard. She wrote a blog post about pulling it all together and produced a fun and educational video, which you can watch right here:

You’ll note Sadie Mae’s patio cover has beautiful black powder-coated column caps and joist hangers.

Maybe you checked out those products on our website and didn’t see powder-coated products showcased there, and you’re wondering how to get those for your project. While we do have a growing list of powder-coated products under our Outdoor Accents® line of decorative hardware, we don’t currently offer powder-coated column caps or joist hangers in stores. However, most of our products are available with powder coating as special orders through any of our distributors. If you need help finding someone to make a special order for you, please check out our dealer locator.

We’re looking into expanding the Outdoor Accents offering to include powder-coated post caps in the future, so look for them soon.

We hope you feel more confident about building a patio cover after watching Sadie Mae’s video (or calling Connor).

Sadie Mae John The Awesome Orange

Sadie Mae John aka The Awesome Orange is a brand ambassador with Simpson Strong-Tie. She DIYs all types of awesome projects with the help of our hardware.

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