GQ's Guide to Living Large in Your Own Backyard

Something isn't adding up here: We spend thousands of dollars decorating a dining room we hardly use, yet we eat off an old ketchup-encrusted picnic table in the backyard. We curate our coffee-table books even though we've never read them, but we make our friends sit on rusted-out lawn chairs. We let the lawn grow wild, eat alfresco under Gitmo-style floodlights, and generally treat the outdoors as if it's the last vestige of our college dorm room. It's time for a change. It's time to extend the same sense of style and design and un-laziness to what should be the most beautiful living space of the house. We're not saying you need to build a koi pond or a formal garden or turn your roof-deck into a boutique-hotel-worthy wet bar (though we wouldn't argue against that, either). We're just saying: Pay attention. It won't take much. All you need are a few sound pieces of advice, the smarts to invest in the right stuff, and the confidence to keep things simple. Oh, and a projection TV. But it's worth it. And to get you started, we have drawn up some simple marching orders.

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