Something’s Missing…
Consider this post Part II to our porch progress post from this morning. We figure almost 500 words was plenty to read on a Friday morning – in fact you may not even be reading this today. Happy Monday if you’re a couple of days behind and checking back in with us later. Hope you had a great weekend! While you were away we got some work done.
- Replace one ripped screen.
Clean and paint all railings a fresh coat of semi-gloss white.- Clean the siding, slate floors and ceiling fans.
- Hang
rods andoutdoor drapes. - Sew slip covers for the seat cushions to make them more washable and puppy-proof.
Here is how our whole back porch was looking. It is located right off of our kitchen, through the French doors just to give you a little bit of perspective.
What is a little tough to see in this picture is the grodiness that was our porch spindles and railing. Here’s a close-up. They were looking a lot like our car port posts which we painted a couple of months ago.
Pretty gross, eh? Good thing we still had our paint from the car port and trash can-hiding fence still around. If you’re curious we used a semi-gloss Valspar exterior paint purchased at Lowes. We’ve been really happy with the thick, somewhat shiny results. Plus it has a lifetime warranty. I’m not sure what that means for paint but we expect it will wear well.
Here is the play-by-play you’ve come to expect from us by now. We’re not going to go into the how-to because we think you guys probably get how we did it.
I’m looking a little intense – got my painting face on along with my birthday Toms. What you can’t see is that I’m also wearing a tee shirt with Ron Burgundy on the back that says “You Stay Classy.” Love it. I also had a certain someone keeping me company.
She’s a firm yet fair supervisor.
They turned out pretty good after a wipe down by Mr. Clean and a fresh coat of paint.
Note that this photo was taken much later in the evening. It took about three hours to carefully clean and paint all of the rails and 58 spindles.
The finished paint job was looking pretty good. Even still in the darker hours last night before we hung up our curtain rods. We apologize in advance for the darkness in many of the photos you’re about to see, we do a lot of our projects at night after work.
It’s a good thing we have lights on our porch fans, which by the way was the very first DIY project tackled at Casa de Whited. Drove us nuts not to have lights out there. Within days of moving in we picked two cheapo light kits up at Home Depot and installed them ourselves for about $20 each.
So with numero dos marked off our list we moved on to complete half of numero four.
- Replace one ripped screen.
Clean and paint all railings a fresh coat of semi-gloss white.- Clean the siding, slate floors and ceiling fans.
- Hang
rods andoutdoor drapes. - Sew slip covers for the seat cushions to make them more washable and puppy-proof.
Hanging drapery rods on our porch isn’t exactly necessary with the screens and all but we I do think they’ll look pretty. Some curtains will also definitely serve a great function in managing the sun that sometimes blinds us when sitting in the rockers at the end of the day.
Our friends at Curtainworks were awesome to hook us up with three rust-proof outdoor curtain rods to kick-start this mini-makeover. Thanks Stephanie!
We chose black rods to complement the other outdoor fixtures of our house, we have black porch lights and shutters, but you can pick up other finishes on Curtainworks website if you’re in the market.
The mounting brackets were a little tricky at first, but once one of us drilled the right sized pilot holes we were rockin’ and rollin’ all around that porch. A couple of screws just had to be stripped in the process. Hate when that happens.
The trick is to use a drill bit that is just smaller than your screws so that they go easily into the wood posts, but still give the screws something to attach to. If you’re having a hard time drilling your screws in AFTER drilling pilot holes they are likely too small, try the next size up. Chad will find it amusing that I am imparting this advice after learning it myself only about 18 hours ago.
But again, once the pilot holes were drilled the right size we were in business, double-fisting our Black and Deckers all around the porch – using the corded drill that has a bit more power to drill our pilot holes and the light weight cordless drill to actually hang the brackets.
The trickier part was planning our rod arrangement. Since we had one l-o-n-g side to cover it took some fanangaling to get the rods just right and connected. Plus, because we’re going to use rings to hang our drapes (read: easy to take curtains up and down to wash) we had to go ahead and space those out and slide them on to our rods before mounting them.
The round brackets included with our rods are perfect for the outdoors because the wind cannot knock the rods down, being fully enclosed circles. Being fully enclosed just means you have to do a little planning in your head when hanging them – which was okay, we don’t mind thinking every now and then.
Which we had to do to get our one corner just right. We basically hung one rod closer in on the wall so the rods wouldn’t touch, and left the finial off of that rod so that the rings could flow together giving the drapes a cohesive look once they’re up.
They’re looking good! Except something is of course still missing.
But, rather than go curtain shopping at 10 PM we decided to go to bed instead. We’re stil debating our curtain choices but will definitely get something hanging this weekend. We’ve thought about standard sheers, lets some light through and not too heavy. Or maybe even drop cloths like our cheapo living room curtains, thick and sturdy, super easy to keep clean. Or what about a fun outdoor fabric for more of a statement?
As soon as we pick the curtains or fabric you guys will be the first to know, well you guys and probably the next door neighbors whose windows look out directly into our porch.
In the meantime go check out Curtainworks website, especially if you’re looking for some great sturdy outdoor curtain rods. Ours were pretty money and we’re not just saying that because they didn’t cost us any.
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