My Awesome Porch Facelift

OK if one could actually marry a screened porch, I'd be the first in line to get that marriage certificate.  I mean, in some states you can marry a goat, so I'm thinking I might just have a chance with my porch.  This makeover is FAR from done but the last two days I have spent almost every waking hour out there fixing 'er up and getting 'er done.  Beware, you might want to go potty or get a drink cuz this is gonna be a long one.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

If you've followed this blog for a while, you will know that I hate my screened porch.  Like DESPISE it.  I was so unbelievably excited to spend $5,000 on it when purchasing my mansion.  I had dreams of sitting out there, bug free, enjoying the sunsets with a nice cold beer.  All of the houses that I toured did not have a screened porch and when I closed on my house, I knew why.  Cuz it was the worst $5,000 I had ever spent.  And I throw 5 G's around like it's nothing, let me tell you.  I was so disappointed in the quality of it.  I literally had my curtains closed over the sliding door that leads to it for ummm about 2 years.  No lie.

After finally coming to terms that I owed that ugly step child on the back of my house, I found some cute resin wicker furniture from Lowe's as well as a couple outdoor rugs and called it a day.  It was definitely better than nothing.

{night shot- terrible camera}

Well this is how it's stayed for the last year.  Believe me- it's definitely gotten some use since there was furniture out there.  And I definitely don't shut the curtains in shame anymore.  But it was seriously boring.  Again with the tan, brown and blue color scheme.  I'm nothing if not predictable.  But if it works, might as well stick with it, right?  Wrong.  Every time I walk by the glass doors, it's like it just sucks the life right out of me.  So I finally decided to do something about it.

I decided that I wanted to do aqua and pink and I was hell bent on finding fabric for the cushions.  Oh in the above pictures the cushions aren't on there cuz they were filthy.  So for a year we sat in the chairs minus the cushions.  Redneckery, I know.  Here's a pre-rug shot when I had mi familia in town and we grilled on my new grill for the first time at like 11pm.  No lie.  My neighbors love me.  

Well the cushions have sat in my garage collecting more dust and dirt and spray paint residue.  Love it.  I finally pulled them out Saturday to asses the damage.  Gross.  But it didn't really matter since they were getting a new outfit soon.  

I headed out to JoAnn's to check out and be extremely disappointed in their selection.  I feel like I keep saying this over and over.  Who wants to go in on a fabric design business with me?  Bueller?  After walking around for about 40 minutes I finally decided on a couple of navy and white fabrics since they didn't have ANYTHING pink (the nerve of them) and their aqua selection sucked balls.  I really wanted to start on the porch on my 4 day mini-vacation so I felt that I had to purchasing something.  But the closer I got to the cutting table I just knew that I didn't like this color scheme. And for $19.99 a yard I better fucking LOVE it if I'm about to spend over $120 on it.  So back on the shelf it went.  I headed to my car and decided to call Hancock Fabrics on the south side.  Some nice lady on the phone told me they had about 30 bolts of outdoor fabric so I decided to try my luck.  I really wasn't looking forward to the hour and a half delay though.  Miss Impatient that I am. 

Once there I didn't find anything in my color choices either.  I was pretty much going to call it a bust and move on to something else, when I went around the corner.   And I found 4 additional outdoor fabric bolts not where they were supposed to be.  And the Heavens opened up and the light began to shine on two of them.  I'm pretty sure they were saying Pick Me Kristi!  Pick Me!!  

Granted, there is no pink.  But how fun are they???!!!???!!  It's bright, which is what I wanted.  It has aqua/teal like I wanted.  And it's nothing if not fun!  I grabbed 3 yards each and loved that they were both $17.99 with 40% off!  So glad I didn't settle for the navy and white fabric.  I'm pretty sure I skipped out of the store, excited to get my paint to match.  

I knew that I wanted to paint the ceiling of the porch for a while.  And it's actually funny, my friend Leah of Leah Luczynski Interior Design posted an article from Better Homes and Garden about painting sun room porches the other day and the ceiling was aqua!  I had to tell her about my plans to do the same.  Great minds MUST think alike!  However, once I had the fabric I decided to do the yellow/green color as the ceiling because I was now planning on painting the concrete the aqua color.  I'm nothing if not ambitious.  

After attempting the first color that the nice guys at Menards made up for me and just seeing canary yellow, I headed back to get it matched again.  The second color was much better, although still not as green-yellow as I'd like it.  But this mama's not breaking her neck again to paint that ceiling.  What a terrible job that is.  Ew.   After two coats I started on the floor.  And this is where I was last night.  

{and yes, the area around the fan is STILL not painted, whatevs}

The yellow ceiling is a lot more yellow in the photo than in real life.  But it's definitely yellow-er than I'd like.  So you can tell that I wasn't really that careful around the base of the walls.  That's because I planned on picking up some rubber molding to cover the area where the floor meets the walls.  The builders did a terrible job and you can see how some boards are shorter and don't even reach the slab.  Frickin ridiculous. And it's just ugly.  It needs to be trimmed out.  

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So off to Lowe's I went last night to find this rubber molding that I've seen before.  When I got there they didn't have white, but had black, gray, almond and brown.  None of which I was really feeling at all.  I wanted it to blend and if I went with the almond I thought that it would just look dirty all the time.  As I was standing there staring at them, one of the workers came back with a vinyl strip of flooring to put back in a box a couple of shelves down.  I saw it and knew I had to have it.  I pushed my cart over to the boxes and realized this was exactly what I wanted (now that I'd seen it! HAH).  The rubber molding was $2.33 for 4ft and didn't have a self-adhesive backing so I'd have to figure something out for that.  The wood plank looking vinyl was also 4ft and was $.98 and had the self-adhesive backing.  SCORE!  Here is what it looks like.  

I didn't know if I'd like it but for $10, why not give it a try?  And who knows if it will even stay stuck on the wall given that it's an open screen porch that gets rain and all other types of weather inside it.  But again, for $10.......  Well the minute I laid one of them up against the wall, I knew I liked it.  So up they went.  

Last night I spent most of the night sewing pillow covers with the circle fabric- I got 6 of them done.  It was pretty easy since they were all squares and didn't take much time.  The longest time was spent stitching the 4th side by hand.  But the country music awards were on and I just watched that while sewing my little heart out. 

Today I brought all of the wicker furniture from my kitchen outside to scrub off all the filth.  Once that was done I brought them back into the porch and started on the seat cushions which were going to be in the striped fabric.  I've only gotten one done so far cuz it's way more complicated than I thought and I really have zero sewing skills.  So the seats are taking me longer.  But once I had that one done I had to put it out there to see what it was going to look like.  See the one lonely finished chair?  Love it!

So here is where the porch stands now.  Ceiling and floor painted, faux wood trim up and furniture back in place.  

Oh and here's a better shot of the plank since most of these picture it's covered up.  

It sooooooo doesn't look faux in the photo.  Like, you wouldn't have even known if I didn't spill the beans.  

So what do you think?  Are you ready to party on the porch?  It's time to start up the grill and have some bbq's.  I can't wait for summer now!