Screened-in Porch

While I was on vacation in Florida, Ed painted the screened-in porch floor and the steps leading from the patio to the porch. The previous owners had stripped both the floor and the steps, and we were worried about leaving them unfinished and unprotected. We went back and forth about whether we wanted to stain or paint and tried to figure out what all our options were. The steps had been painted before and while the flat parts had been stripped, the edges had not. So paint was pretty-much a no-brainer there. What wasn't a no-brainer was the color. For the porch, we finally decided on a brick red color. At first, I thought red would look terrible. I was thinking of some shade of gray. The siding for the house is a grayish green/blue color (I say it's more blue, Ed says it's more green) and the wood trim of the porch is white. But once we put a bunch of paint samples down, we both agreed that the red actually looked pretty good. So I left for Florida and told Ed to go with his instincts. He painted the porch floor red!

Then it was time to paint the steps, and he thought maybe he should paint those red, too. Luckily, he consulted with our neighbor who quickly told him red steps would not look good. She suggested he try to match the siding, so he took a siding sample to the paint store and picked a color that matched. (Thank goodness for good neighbors!) The color in the can actually ended up being a bit lighter than the siding, but we both think it looks good enough to keep. We thought we'd live with it for a little while before trying to re-match the siding color.

So here are a few pictures:

Clearly, we need porch furniture now, and some decor. (The camping chairs and playhouse just aren't cutting it in the whole style department!) But any progress is good progress, right? We're looking at a wicker seating set for the area where the camping chairs are now (something like this: http://www.hayneedle.com/sale/capecodallweatherwickerconversationset.cfm). And eventually, we'd like a narrow table at the other end, where the playhouse is now.

And speaking of progress, we did purchase two rocking chairs and a small table for the front porch. For our next focus, we're debating between the living room and our home offices. I want to focus on the living room, but I need a desk space the huge printer that I bought on a whim from Amazon.com. It was crazy deal and I jumped on it without even thinking about how big it would be. Oops! I'm sure it will come in handy when we set it all up though!