A balcony makeover

14.06.2026

We'd been talking about giving our balcony a much-needed makeover for months, but like all working people, we kept putting it off. Finally, one fine weekend with nothing else on the agenda, we headed to IKEA to figure out how to make it happen.

We bought 9 sets of wood-textured balcony tiles (9 tiles per set) for 160 euros, the real gamechanger of this makeover. Alongside that came a self-assembly table, a bench, and some cushions to go with it.

With everything loaded up at home, we poured ourselves some lemonade and got to work. First came the least glamorous part: scrubbing the algae off the walls, followed by a good hose-down to rinse it all away.

Then came the fun part, laying the tiles. It looked daunting at first, but turned out to be the easiest job of the day: set a tile down, click it into the next one, and repeat.

The real challenge was giving the space some character with the furniture. The bench, innocuous as it looked, put up the biggest fight. But by the end of it, tired and a little sore, we couldn't stop admiring what we'd built.

We finally had ourselves a luxurious balcony (by our standards, anyway) to enjoy all summer. And what better way to celebrate than with a home-cooked egg biryani to close out the day.

Fin.