I knew you'd come up with great ideas! I've seen a picture with one made from a shutter but had forgot about it. Like the idea about bicycle baskets and old tool boxes and chalk board paint. A little town near me is having their "town yard sale" this Saturday and boy is it always big, big, big. Found lots of treasures last year. Thanks for your replies and ideas!

I'd like to create two ten foot swooping borders of ferns. I'm in know way proficient in ferns...So If anyone has any ideas as to how to pattern which different ferns that would need to be hardy to zone 7... perferably 6 though since I like to shortin by one.. I'm psycho...I'm interested in a ferns that would cover large area...that would wave together well... regardless of being picky aobut the actual fern cultivar... but I'm always down for something colorful and maybe even so that its out of place...I'm not picky on height...the taller the better though...and I've got plenty of space so it can feather out as wide as it wants... These borders are gonna be the wall like border on two sides of my new shade garden.. the other two are my house and a fence mostly disquised by a stone structure and random stones. And some tall woodland perennials soon....I'm leaving a 3 foot space between each of the walls for a stone pathway to lead through... I've got this all planned out and now I just need help finding which ferns to plant =)

First thing I would recomend is sculpt the beds and get rid of the straight lines. And when you sculpt, you will have a place to plant some palms away from the cage and create privacy without blocking the view too(maybe other low growing palms like the pigmy date). Then when you live there full time you will have plenty of room to plant bedding plants to attract the butterflies. This depends on what area in Fl you are(winter low temps are the consideration there)maybe some ixora in different colors if winter is very mild.

Thank you for all the responses. I realize it's a bit ambitious. We would work with an architect to make sure the plans are feasible. We originally planned to add an extension off the primary bedroom over our garage but the cost is a lot higher than anticipated. So curious to see what we can do within our current walls. We do use the office a good amount so we need to keep an office. Rockybird - I like your drawing. We considered this before moving into the house but being short on time, we decided against reversing the floorplan like that, but it's a consideration. Any idea how much something like that would cost (redo small hallway bath, build out bigger master bath in new location, move around some walls/patch floors and walls, possibly move a window or two)? Is $100k realistic?