Creeping Towards Cozy

Posted July 18, 2011 // La Casa, Screened Porch

Slowly but surely we’ve added a few things to our back porch to up the cozy factor around here.  We told you guys last week all about how we wanted to clean up our back porch and add some finishing touches like curtains to maximize the rest of our Summer.  Heck, the folks at Curtainworks even pitched in and gave us the curtain rods to get started, so we had no excuses right? 

Here was our list – because we love ‘em.

  1. Replace one ripped screen.
  2. Clean and paint all railings a fresh coat of semi-gloss white.
  3. Clean the siding, slate floors and ceiling fans.
  4. Hang rods and outdoor drapes.
  5. Sew slip covers for the seat cushions to make them more washable and puppy-proof.

And here it is now with a few items checked off.

  1. Replace one ripped screen.
  2. Clean and paint all railings a fresh coat of semi-gloss white.
  3. Clean the siding, slate floors and ceiling fans.
  4. Hang rods and outdoor drapes.
  5. Sew slip covers for the seat cushions to make them more washable and puppy-proof.

On Friday the porch looked like this, all nekkid and curtain-less.

And here it is now, a little dressed up but not finished. WITH clean ceiling fans. I swear there were spores growing on one of them.

We’re doing our part around here to keep the drop cloth people in business, because we decided to use them to construct our porch curtains, just like we did our living room curtains and soon to be finished dining room curtains.

We know… you can say it. Enough of those things already.

We chose drop cloths again though, sans paint, because the canvas is such a nice thick material that should hold up well in the weather. Plus they aren’t too bright white to show dirt and wear which is bound to occur around our pups.  Finally they are cheap enough that if the elements were to totally destroy them we’re only out $40 for all of them.   We definitely checked out fabric stores for sales on outdoor prints, but nothing really caught our eye.

The sales price of $10 a yard would still put us a bit over budget at $120 total. Yikes – kind of cancels out those free curtain rods huh?

One thing we did learn on the drop cloths round two, is that sometimes they have weird seams sewn into them. Like something figures it doesn’ t matter because it’s just a cheap ugly drop cloth. Doesn’t the drop cloths company know there are people out there turning these things into curtains? Luckily we were able to cut the weird seams off.

The we just hemmed the top using our tried and true iron-on tape method and clipped them onto the rings we hung up at the end of last week.  We purchased the rings from Lowes for about $10 a pack which added another $30 to our mini-makeover total.

As the room comes together the plan is to add some excitement to the curtains with ribbon trim or festive tie backs. Something to take them away from boring beige.

Plus the nice and clean siding gives the outdoor room a fresh start and clean feel. We just uses a big sponge and some diluted  Mr. Clean to take care of the grime.  Three buckets of black water later and the whole wall was done. You could eat off our siding now – which would be pretty difficult due to it’s vertical nature, but you get our point. It’s pretty darn clean right now.

We traded the homemade ice cream we mentioned in a previous post here, for a bottle of wine instead. Great way to spend a Sunday evening in Durham.  What have you guys been up to since Friday?

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