10 Ways to Buy a Great Summer at Home

NEW YORK (MainStreet) -- For outdoor enthusiasts who spent the past few weekends rolling grills out of storage and setting up deck, porch or balcony furniture, this time of year was worth the wait.

If your home's outdoor setup is just right, it gets really tough to leave. Couple a sweet grill and a comfortable chair with gas prices averaging more than $3.90 a gallon and warm summer weather becomes a strong argument for staying home.

Considering the impact of even a modest outdoor improvements, we've come up with 10 outdoor investments that can turn even the most modest real estate into an open-air resort:

Outdoor HD projector
Unless you want to pay more than $8 a pop to watch superheroes duke it out, an outdoor projector's not a bad idea. The local Walgreens(WAL) and CVS(CVS) sell inexpensive projectors consumers can hook up to a DVD player, computer or, in some cases, a smartphone. Epson packaged a projector, DVD player and speakers into its portable MovieMate line that starts with a low-resolution model and bumps up to a 720p high-definition version with HDMI input for Blu-ray or streaming.

Outdoor movie screen
If you didn't spend a whole lot on your projector, a sheet, wide window shade or handy blank wall may do the trick. If you're a bit more serious, Open Air Cinema offers a 9- by 5-foot inflatable screen that costs $600 and needs to be held down by tent-style tether cables. The Hammacher-Schlemmer catalog's $1,000 outdoor inflatable theater, meanwhile, has an inflatable 72-inch screen and comes with a 900-lumen standard-definition projector with HDMI and VGA inputs and two water-resistant speakers.