Porch Spiffing

Before heading down to New Orleans last week I switched up a couple things on the porch.  It went from this:

To this (on the opposite side):

I like this better because it doesn't feel as bridal to me.  Very relaxing.

The shelves also got de-cluttered a bit going from this:

to this:

I buy ferns every year and usually I hang them (and they inevitably die) so I'm hoping that by being in pots, the transition indoors will help me keep them alive easily. 

Porch Progress

Before

After

I'm completely in love with the color.  As I mentioned before, it's just your run-of-the-mill Valspar Porch and Floor Paint, dark gray.  The pattern (speckles?) of the concrete still show through, but I think the texture is kind of nice.

The jury is still out as to whether we'll stencil on top of the new color.  I was thinking a trellis pattern would be cool.  Something like this: 

 

(Courtesy of Cutting Edge Stencils)

So far my mom and husband are both voting against me, saying it will be too busy with the rug.  What do you think?  Too much pattern?

Porch Floor Update

Happy Saturday!  I just returned from a whirlwind trip to the east coast (which I'll be discussing later) but sorry for the blogging hiatus. 

Back to the porch.  Ahh the porch.  All the waiting I've had to do with the rain then the too-hot-to-paint- in heat.  Finally step 1 of the floor painting is finished!

You may remember that it originally looked like this:

Nasty outdoor carpeting and all.  Several weekends ago, I pulled it up (and happily threw it in the garbage!) and was left with this:

I may be naive about what actually caused the speckles, but I still thought it was a heck of a lot better than the nasty carpet!

The big guy and I moved all the furniture out, taped off the "trim," and followed the directions on the back of the Valspar porch and floor paint can. 

*Note* our concrete has never been painted, so we didn't have to do anything particularly difficult to prep it.  After a little shop vac'ing and mopping with a mixture of warm water and vinegar, we were ready to go.

After photos to come (a.k.a-I need to go purty it up a bit since I've been gone for a while!)

Fab finds

Last weekend I went to a great antique/resale shop in my hometown. It's a neat little shop on main street and I almost always find cool treasures. Here's the stuff that is now taking up residency at 912 ELM Tree.

This little guy had me from hello.  I spotted it on the sidewalk as I was walking up and I literally ran to snatch it before anyone else could.  (Oops, still need to take the tag off!)  Everything from the color to the pedestal-goodness makes me swoon.  I keep hanging out on the porch and walking by the window just to gaze at it. 

Here's the view from the top.  It has such a cute shape!  (And as you can probably tell from the pictures, something is missing from the porch! More on that later.)

This picture is a little blurry, but I also happened across some postcard-sized, framed art of notable/historic businesses from our hometown.  I thought these could look super cool as part of a gallery wall in the man cave. 

The frames were regular 'ole wood and as you can tell I've already dolled them up a bit.  With the walls being a neutral creamy gray, the blues and greens really pop. 

Have you found any treasures lately?

Porch Update

Again with the rain! Porch painting projects are still not being accomplished because of the impending danger of more storms. 

I did have an indoor project waiting for me, however.  As you could see from this post here, I've been thinking about doing something with lanterns and I even DIY'ed one myself.  My interest was caught the other day when I saw these on Pinterest.

I thought it might be fun to mix some of these with lanterns.  They're actually very simple to make.  All you need is tissue paper and a pipe cleaner (or florists wire, if you have that on hand.)  I really wanted gray pom poms but apparently it's very difficult to find! I could order it online, but I don't want it that badly.

Anyways, I followed this tutorial here at Design Dazzle and found it to be very easy to follow.  Feeling very accomplished on this rainy Sunday, I dashed to the porch to see how everything would look together and. I. don't. like. it. 

I like the concept of this idea, but I think using all white is where I went wrong.  It just looks a little too bridal/wedding.

The textures look awesome together, I'll admit, but the all white isn't working.  Wishing now that I'd gone with the gray.  Maybe I'll add some of my other accent colors to it and see what happens.  I am going to try a couple more arrangements to see if I like that better. 

In other porch news, these little guys recently took up residency on the porch.  Aren't they cute?  I am planning to re-pot them soon.

This is one of the fabrics I'm working with.  I really love the geometric pattern.

So it's back to the drawing board on the lighting front.  (Originally I'd thought I'd get a light kit for the DIY'ed lantern, but a friend pointed out to me that all the materials I used are highly flammable, so I decided against it.)

Here are some options I really like from Pinterest

(apartment therapy)

April Showers

The story goes that April showers bring May flowers.  Right now they're just bringing me headaches!  Most of my on-going porch projects are dependent upon being able to take stuff outside to paint, moving things outside so they're out of the way, etc.  I know there's really no hurry but I HATE when things take for-ev-ur, for-ev-ur (are you thinking about The Sandlot now?)


I hope everyone had a great weekend!  My kids finished their state standardized assessments on Friday, rounding out a LONG week.  Eric and I played trivia on Saturday night with some good friends.  I LOVE TRIVIA!  We didn't win but did pretty decent. 


Anywhoo, if you follow me on Pinterest you might have figured out what I'm working on over here.  If not, allow me to show you some recent inspiration.

(craftynest.com)

(also from craftynest.com)

Aren't they just gorgeous?!?!


I especially liked the idea of doing the hemp lanterns and I even had *all the stuff* on hand! (*I modified a pinch, using the leftover fabric stiffener and flour mixture from the Easter project I made here.)  It didn't work.  Probably because, duh, I changed the sticky stuff recipe.  I found that the hemp was too heavy and fell off of my bouncy ball.  So I switched to yarn and SHAZAM it worked!  Only problem was, it really wasn't the color I was going for.  Now you can understand why the April showers we've been having are testing my nerves.  They needed, wait for it, glossy white spray paint!


Here's where I'm at so far.  Think of this as a teaser.  It's not finished yet because it needs more paint and the light hanging kit.

Cool, huh?!


Darn having parent-teacher conferences two nights this week until 8:00 PM!  I probably won't get back to these anytime soon because I've also been put on trim painting duty.  YAY trim!  We had intended to get trim as our joint Christmas present, but we just got around to buying it.  Now my job is to paint so the Mr. can put it up.

Porch-tastic

We have a screened-in porch.  Pretty much, we moved in, plunked some stuff down in there, and haven't done anything with it since.  Until now.  But I'm not showing you that stuff, yet.

I love the glass windows.  It's hard to see in these pictures, but each panel actually tilts out.  Something that I do not love is the outdoor carpet. 

This is the furniture that Eric's grandmother gave us. Apparently it used to be bright white but when she had it repainted, the handyman said the store was out of white spray paint. Gasp! Out of white spray paint?!?!  The set has oodles of charm, but the peach color needs to go! 

Mr. light in the corner looks semi-cool in the picture, but in real life is a rusty mess.  I really did want to salvage him but the poor guy was in bad shape.

So there you have it.  The before.  Stay tuned for the updates!