Summer Porch Refresh | Part One

Hello! I am excited to share our summer porch refresh with you all today! As you can see in the title this is only part one however. We still have a couple things we want to do with the porch area but have not gotten to them yet. The biggest job will be staining the porch! Ugh! NOT excited about that part at all. Even though this porch is pretty small, we also have a big deck in the backyard, fence and swing set to stain as well. So that is why we have been dragging our feet. 😉 I will update you when we get it done. We are thinking of going a dark brown with the stain instead of the cedar color so kinda excited about that!

One of the biggest changes with our front porch is our newly painted front door! Isn’t the color beautiful!? I bought some paint from Menards and had it color matched to Benjamin Moore Wythe Blue HC-143. I LOVE it! It goes much better with the lighter colors on our house from our painted garage doors and DIY craftsman style board and batten shutters. If you want to see our front porch before, check out our last Christmas front porch. The DIY magnolia wreath is actually the same one used in that post only minus the Santa. The door and big planter used to be red. I love how easy and effective it is to transform something with paint!

A couple other updates we still want to do are to change out the brass door handle on our storm door for black and get a new doorbell. Honestly I think I have taken the doorbell out of pictures in the past because it is so plain and ugly. Ha! Also, we do have house numbers next to the door but I just remove them for privacy purposes.

Isn’t this plant cool? It is called a Celosia. We got it because it was so unique. The flowers almost feel like velvet. It reminds me of something that would be on an alien planet. LOL Seriously, I have never seen one like it before. The ants love the flowers too. That is fine as long as they stay outside!! The description card said the plant loved sun so that was perfect for this spot although I have to water it literally every day or the next day it looks almost dead. That is not good for someone like me who does not have a green thumb at all. Guess that gene skips a generation. 😉 I had to set a reminder in my phone to tell me to water it so that has been helping.

That planter used to be in the other corner where now we have a new bench! It was at Walmart on clearance for $35! Not too shabby. This has always been an awkward sized space that I was not sure how to decorate in the past, but the bench fits perfectly and still leaves some room to add some pretty things! 😉

The wall above the bench is currently blank but I want to make some kind of wall decor to hang there. That is another thing on the to do list. I am envisioning some kind of background piece with words on the front that we can change up for different seasons. I will have to enlist Mr. Wonderful for help and we will see what we can come up with.

I got a couple rugs to help make the porch feel more homey. However when I got home, I was sorely disappointed because the door does not clear the rugs! Ugh! After that, I remembered the same thing happened about 13 years ago when we first bought the house! Ha! I guess that is why we have never had a rug there.

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I figured we might as well take some pretty pictures of the nice rugs before I returned them to the store! 😉 The next day after the gray one flattened out a bit more, I found out it does work but barely! So I will be keeping that one but returning the welcome mat. Or maybe using it on the back deck… I haven’t decided yet.

I found the cute little fresh cut flowers sign at the Target dollar spot and the outdoor lantern came from Target as well. Also the tobacco basket is from Hobby Lobby, they were clearanced out for 80% off so check your local store and you may find some! The olive bucket is from Decor Steals and came in a set of 3. Don’t worry if they are sold out, they will eventually be back in stock. 🙂 The fresh cut flowers sign was perfect to go along with these beautiful hydrangeas.

 

Our day lilies were starting to bloom so I wanted to get some pictures of them too!

Hopefully we will get the other changes done soon so I can show you part two. Who knows, at the rate we are going though it may be fall before that happens! 😉 Have a wonderful week!