Category: Outside

The Front Porch as it is Now

I don’t know if it’s finished, but I’m done working on it for the year. I would still like to paint the wooden stools and add a long window box behind each bench, but those little projects can wait.

We really like spending time out here. Eleanor and I start out most mornings by sitting on this side of the porch, watching neighbors and cars go by.

Some of the ferns are a little out of control…

But it makes the porch feel lush and green.

Tomorrow, I’ll post a design board with sources listed for everything.

August 12, 2010
Homegrown Tomatoes

Another item off the 30 Before Thirty list: ~~25. Grow tomatoes.~~ Done!

And they are delicious.

I’d better get moving on the rest of my list though. I have less than two months to go and still 19 items to complete. Yikes. And here I thought I was making good progress…

July 30, 2010
FROSTA

I finally figured out what I want for a coffee table on the front porch, since I gave our furniture to my mom. I was looking through Apartment Therapy’s Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces (excellent book, by the way) and noticed that Maxwell had cut down an IKEA FROSTA stool to use as a low end table in his living room. Perfect! I can group three of them together and cut them down so that they’re the right height, then paint them.

Except IKEA seems to have discontinued it.

But my local store still has some in stock! So now I’m planning to head out there today and buy a bunch. At first I thought I’d just want three. Then I thought I could get two more to put a couple of plants on. Then I was thinking that I should buy about ten of them because they’re discontinued and what if they don’t have them anymore and mine get ruined because they’re not really supposed to be outside or what if I find another use for them and then I can’t find them anymore!? Then I realized that that was hoarder mentality and I should not be so crazy. So I’m back down to five. I think.

June 30, 2010
Our Furniture in my Mom’s Backyard

Last year, I worked on our front porch for a Better Homes & Gardens 48-Hour Challenge. It was a lot of fun and we even won, which was awesome (and all thanks to you). I spend a lot of time out front sitting with Eleanor because she loves to watch people walking by, especially if they’re walking by with a dog, and we’ve really had a good time enjoying the front porch as a family. This year though, I decided to give the furniture from our porch to my mom.

My mom has two small children of her own, and they’re living on just her husband’s salary while she stays home with the kids (my very young brother and sister) and goes back to school to switch careers (she has always wanted to be a teacher). My mom and I both fell for gardening in the last couple of years, and she has turned her backyard from barren and weedy to something lush and beautiful. The only problem is that she doesn’t have a lot of extra money right now, and she only had two little chairs for her entire yard. I thought that the table and chairs and bench from our porch would look really cute in her yard, and in that way I’m able to share with her some of the opportunities that I’ve had through the blog.

I don’t know if my mom is going to paint the pink set (I told her to go ahead — my feelings will not be hurt), but doesn’t it look great in her yard? And I love that she added a cushion to the bench to tie it in with the chairs that she already had.

(Love you, mom.)

June 30, 2010
Substituting for the Soleil Chair

I’m turning my attention once again to the front porch. Remember, I gave the furniture that was out there to my mom (whom I visiting this weekend for her birthday, so maybe I’ll get some photos of the table and chairs in her yard).

I got as far as putting new benches on each end of the porch before stalling out and moving on to other projects. Summer is short though, and I want to finish so I’m back on the job! I think I just need to add a chair, a little side table or maybe a coffee table, plus plants. I’ve always liked this Soleil Lounge Chair, but I recently realized that I have a similarly shaped chair already. It was from Pier 1 (a long time ago). Here it is in a photo from a few years back:

I know it’s not an exact match, but it’s free. I’m considering spray painting it, though I don’t know what color. In white I think the lines of the chair would make it a decent substitute for the Soleil, but why limit myself to white? I mean, there’s always pink. Or yellow. Or green. Or…

June 22, 2010
Landscape the Front of the House

This was one of the items on my 30 Before Thirty list. We’ve lived here for three years now, and the front has been a bit bare the whole time. There was a dead Rose of Sharon that we removed, but not before leaving it up for a year first (“maybe it will come back!”). We also added some hostas (free from my dad’s house) and two boxwoods (small, and not holding up so well).

I feel like there’s more pressure to make the front of the house look nice because that’s the public part that everyone sees. I’ve been having fun experimenting with the garden in the back, adding and subtracting, moving and rearranging plants as I see fit. And it’s looking pretty cute back there!

But the front? Nope. The front has remained bare because I’m too afraid to put the wrong plants in. Yeah, well guess what I did.

I went to the nursery looking for some flowers and a bush. I got five astilbes (good choice!), but then I also got an Ivory Halo dogwood (wrong choice). The flowers are excellent in the shade, which is what the front of the house gets. The bush is supposed to be in full sun. I didn’t even look at the tag because we have three of the dogwoods in the backyard getting partial sun, and I thought I remembered them being OK in part sun to shade. Wrong. So now I’m not sure if I should move it (to where, I don’t know), or take my chances and hope it survives.

Oh, and the front of the house still looks pretty bare.

June 1, 2010