After years and years of looking at the awful balcony (especially in covid lockdown!), I finally got up the courage to renovate it! First up was painting the orange brick. I used the Dulux Texture Paint & Primer. The Paint I had tinted to match my apartment wall colour (Hopsack by Taubman's), this was so the balcony would have the affect of an extension to my living room, being a small apartment. The flooring is the 'click-in' tiles from Kmart which actually started this whole process as they are an easy install. I was limited by how much I could cut them so I ended up filling in a small gap by the door with stones.
My absolute pride and joy to make from scratch was the Planter Box, I got the instructions off youtube/website and once I was able to convert the American sizing I bought the wood from Bunnings using pine fencing for the sides, and the dressed timber for the legs top and luckily for me Bunnings is able to cut timber because I have no way of doing that!. While I did make a mistake on the top part (I used the wrong size timber for the top short sides) - it worked in my favour with how the end product looked with legs width now matching the top trim. I made it to fit the end of the balcony and painted it with the same paint I had on hand from my other project. It was British Paints - Paint & Prime. If I ever made this again I would use the dressed timber for the sides as well rather then the rough pine fencing.
The next stage to this is doing something with the concrete on the top of the wall, and add more plants/decorate pieces - a job for summer!.
