A Southern Porch In The Making {part one}

 

The first thing I fell head over heels with when we bought our house a few years ago was the huge front porch!

It spoke to the southern girl in me as soon as I saw it!  I had visions of family and friends gathering on this front porch for evening chats while sipping on some sweet tea or drinking coffee.

YES SIR-reee!  A True Bona-Fide Southern Porch!

However… there were problems with the porch from the get go…

We had a little “porch fiasco”…

We knew there were settling issues with the porch when we bought the house… but really didn’t know the extent of it.

 

Long story short… the porch began to really sag and cave in… all from a builder’s mistake of using wood supports under concrete… they eventually rotted underneath and the porch caved in.

(this is after they broke it up)

He had to come fix the problem… poured new concrete… but let’s just say…

 

not happy with it… not only did a huge crack come in within a month’s time but he also did not seal it… soooo… STAIN GALORE over the past few years.

The "southern dream porch” was not off to a good start!!!!

ANYWAY… moving forward…

We did some updating…made improvements…

Painted our shudders from blue to black, our door from cream to black and eventually changed out the brass light fixtures to black carriage light fixtures.

 

It was starting to shape up!

Now this is a pretty big porch… and it needed some furniture if we were going to enjoy it.

Ah yes… the porch furniture…

At first, I really didn’t have a budget for outdoor furniture… and really wasn’t sure what kind I wanted…  Adirondack chairs?  Rocking Chairs? Wicker? A Swing??

So many choices… and a very limited budget… but I knew I wanted something with a southern feel.

We started out with two tan plastic adirondack chairs (it’s all I could afford at the time)… (don’t laugh!!!)

I painted them black to match our painted black shutters…

but eventually… I began to not like the chairs… not that I was very fond of them when I bought them… but it was affordable seating at the time and it gave me an idea if I would even want the wood ones or not.

Tennessee humidity and wear and tear took it’s tole on the painted plastic…

They started to feel sticky and then they peeled/cracked/broke… so I eventually moved them to the back porch… yes I still have them…lol.

Oh Well…

I was back to square one… with no where to sit and still no company enjoying long chats on the porch…

Anyway…

there was another issue… (a cosmetic one)

the columns… they began to peel over time… we got lazy and let them peel for the longest… it looked awful… but since nobody was enjoying the porch it didn’t seem like a priority to paint them.

With a stained porch, flaky columns and no furniture (not to mention the bugs and spider webs we let accumulate out there since we didn’t use it)… it looked as though my dream of having a southern front porch had died.

Until this year…

(to be continued)

Part Two Here… Faux Tile