One major project we took on here recently was to do a much needed porch…
The Front Porch Before {Outdoor Porch Makeover Plan}
Today I’m guest posting over at the Kickoff to Summer Series at Making Lemonade. Come read all kinds of summer tips and my ideas for how to garden on a budget. It’s easier than you think.
In the front of our house we are lucky enough to have a large covered porch. It’s part of what makes our 113-year old Colonial a charming home, and is a lovely spot to relax in the summer. You can find me out there blogging some days since the wireless reaches outside, which I love.
Even though our house is nicely painted and trimmed, this outdoor space not. It’s in desperate need for a face lift as you’ll see in the upcoming photos. When we bought this house we knew it was going to need updating, but with other things going on inside, we only got to the porch last summer.
One of my 2012 home goals was to fix it up. And actually we did that. Surprise, (some of) this upcoming makeover happened last year. I just haven’t had time to write about it until now.I mentioned in my review of my goals in January that we did get to do some updating on the porch and even promised a new one coming your way soon.
So I thought I’d start from the beginning and show you the (like many spaces in my house) terrible before photos.
This was actually the condition in which we bought this house. Most areas had peeling paint or exposed raw wood. There are even parts of the porch where the wood is broken.
Like all do it yourself-ers we thought we’d go at the peeling paint with some paint stripper and move on to refinishing. You can see in the top photo we had already taped and started. That was a laugh! We spend hours on one small section of this porch only to get nowhere. This was a roughly 2 x 6 section we used various types of strippers on and nothing worked.
In one part we counted 9 layers of paint. Probably 100-year old paint.
The front steps were also in terrible condition. If this is the first impression of our house, it says don’t come in. We needed to fix it pronto.
And I’d love to stain those planter boxes someday too.
The good thing about the porch is that is has beautiful trim and a wood ceiling. Although the trim needs cleaning, it is painted well. The ceiling is an amazing dark stain and we love it. We don’t have to do anything to either of those parts in our makeover.
Based on our failed stripping attempts and the amount of broken floor boards, we knew we needed to call in help. So we hired a local restoration company to come refinish and fix the porch. This was actually the first time we’ve done that. It can be very liberating to have someone else come do some grueling labor at your house, that’s for sure. But we knew it would work out great.
I took lots of photos along the way, so come back and see how we’ll spruce things up out there. Here is the porch makeover plan:
- Remove all the paint on the porch
- Remove paint on the concrete stairs
- Repair broken wood
- Repaint the porch and touch up any trim
- Stain the flower boxes?
- Get a rug
- Repaint the chairs
- Replace the cushions on the chairs
- Get a coffee table of some kind
- Add decorations like lanterns, pillows, plants and other accessories including outdoor lights
P.S. Don’t forget to visit Making Lemonade for the Kickoff to Summer Series!
can’t wait to see it! sadly, i sort of like the chippy worn look, but i know it’s not functional when there are broken boards! 🙂
can’t wait to see it! sadly, i sort of like the chippy worn look, but i know it’s not functional when there are broken boards! 🙂