I spread GE Exterior Silicone II on the bike bars and wrapped them with the wicker. I used large clamps to hold the wicker in place until the silicone dried (This was not an easy or fast process). I used a whole can of Minwax Polyurethan on the wicker, straw, wood, willow, bamboo, handle bars and seats. The wicker soaks up the Poly and it acts as an extra glue and hardener. I plan to do extra coats periodically. I even coated the burlap fabric with the Poly. I am not a confident gardener about what to plant in the baskets. Temperatures are already gettin' up to 100. It will probably need to be potted plants. This Fall, I plan to fill the back basket with coconut liner then those miniature pumpkin gourds that I am growing in the back yard. Last year people were using my bike as a photo op on Halloween night. I had painted it with spray primer to look like rust and It had yellow pansies in it.

I work in the steel industry and powder coating industry and can tell you if you can find and afford aluminum go for it. Powder coating only prolongs the rusting. Water will find it way inside and rust from the inside out. If you scratch it it will rust. However, it is usually much cheaper and you may be able to buy 3-4 powder sets to one aluminum mainly due to limited aluminum availability and it is used on higher end furniture. Good luck.

dee - is that your sunroom wicker? Real stuff? It looks real. I think a lot of the resin stuff does too, from far away, I just don't like the plasticky look and feel up close. Very nice pieces - I think I like open work better than closed though with kids the closer-woven stuff is probably better. Since the pieces I bought yesterday really don't need a full paint job, I'm going to leave them white until they do. The chairs are glossy white, the settee looks more creamy but I'm not going to paint it just now - too many other projects around this house this year! I may paint the larger settee gloss white, or then again may just sell it if it doesn't all fit on the porch. Would you use the print on all the cushions? I thought that might be a little too much, but when the weather gets warm I'll pull the furniture out, clean it up, and take some more pics with the fabric. I'll just keep the twill and the floral, for $18 for (at least) 11 yds it's worth it, someone in my family will use it for something.

oopsie - where in the "nook" would you put the bookcase? It's where it is now because 1) I had planned on doing built-on bookcases on either side when we built the house, had been looking for a matching (IKEA) one for other side until my dad brought the Victrola over and 2) now it balances the Victrola. The Victrola is on that side b/c of where the crank is. The LS is 5ft long and 3ft deep - so can't move it to other end of area rug until we make the nook bigger, since it's too hard to get past Ds's chair. I don't want to move the sofa down closer to the bay - I like it centered on the slider. Eventually we'll build in bookcases and a window seat (not deep - will follow the contours of the bay so we can still fit the tree). The opening to the bay is 9 ft across, with 1ft 11" wall space on either side (where bookcase and Victrola are). Until we can afford to get that done we're living with the sofabed (bad idea to put it in the "great room" open to kitchen), we were trying to seat 5-7 people so bought LS and then found ottoman at GW, but I'm willing to get rid of the LS and ottoman as long as we can still seat 4-5 comfortably (not on wooden dining chairs & barstools). 2 chairs could be split up on either side of slider, LS cannot ;-) I sort of like the monochromatic scheme (very soothing), but would like to bring more pattern (besides tone-on-tone stripes) into the room. I wouldn't be adverse to painting the walls a different color when/if we redo the tile in the kitchen, but it would have to work with the oak cabinets, pine trim, tan carpet, linen shades and khaki/mocha sofa. Well, maybe not the carpet b/c if/when we do tile (and sunroom) I'd likely be putting hardwoods in FR. But the sofa and shades have to stay - we have too much $$ into them.