Friday, August 30, 2013

Front Porch- Finished!

Every time I have a room "completed" in my new house, I'll post pictures of it. I don't know if I even have "before" pictures of the porch but it was white and that was it. And while some people think it's a waste to decorate a porch- I disagree. This porch is the door we use 100% of the time and it's the first impression of the people who live there. When you come into my house I want you to know these things:

1. I am organized and tidy.
2. I am funny.
3. I like colorful things and color doesn't scare me.

So behold... my front porch. And TWO Pinterest projects!

A few months ago, I saw THIS POST through Pinterest and knew immediately that this would be the focal point of my new front porch. Anyone who knows me in real life knows I say this phrase a lot. I should try to not say it as much but fuck off.

The only issues I ran into is that the letters in the instructions weren't available anywhere near me. The letters at Michaels were kind of kid like, and so that left me with Hobby Lobby where I paid $1.69 per letter. There are a lot of letters in this phrase, so this already wasn't a cheap project. The letters are wood, so I ended up using acrylic paint to paint them teal. THEN, I used a dry foam brush and painted white over it so it didn't look so plain.

And of course, attached them with the velcro command strips. Oh yes, and painted the walls what turned out to be piss yellow.

 The level of awesome here is pretty high considering you can see this from the driveway.
 Then I really, really, really wanted a chevron ceiling. So I also bought a template from Hobby Lobby and every single website was like, "This is so easy!". No. No it is not and they are lying bitches.

You know who you are.
I struggled for twenty minutes taping this on and in the end, deciding twenty minutes per stencil and this is not worth it. Cute and adorable- it doesn't matter. So I ended up using teal paint and painted the ceiling teal and then did the white brush strokes over it. And put a new light fixture in.

THEN.

The porch had a built in bench already there but it was kind of ugly and it needed a cushion. I priced one out and at $104 I decided I need to figure out a far cheaper option. Then I found THIS online and it said easy. And unlike the chevron ceiling, this actually was easy.
 Hobby Lobby had rolls of foam on sale so I bought one for $30 minus my 40% coupon. Matt had a piece of board and I glued the foam onto the board using spray adhesive. Why use a board? Because my cushion is just going to sit on top of the bench, AND I need something hard to staple the fabric into. I suppose you could try to just wrap the foam in fabric but that seemed far more labor intensive so I decided against it.
 THEN I found fabric on clearance that had teal and  piss yellow and some other colors that match the brown trim. Even better? It's kind of plastic vinyl, so I could wipe off snow/water/mud from it. Score. So I wrapped my fabric on my foam and board and stapled. Easy peasy.
So as you come into the porch this window is to your left. I found some flameless candles that match and I like green plants and these two fake ones were on clearance. Win.
My bench! With Batman sitting on it because it's squishy and in the sunshine. Oh yes, and I bought some pillows because they too were on clearance at Target.

So there's my front porch, 100% done. On the links I provided are complete instructions on the original websites in case these look like something you might want to do. The bench cushion was actually far easier than I thought it was going to be and I've already determined I'm going to do something similar in the other porch. Eventually.

4 comments:

Steff said...

Your porch is SO freaking awesome! I'm so jealous!

SpiritPhoenix said...

Looks amazing!!! Great job!

ComfyMom~Stacey said...

Looks great! I love the colors!

____j said...

Love the colors! & now I'm wishing I had a front porch...