I Want A Porch! Part 4-The Finale

Making our front seating area has really been a long process. Mainly because it is competing with other areas of the house and weather and laziness. We left off here which was all about buying the bushes. Since then we planted them of course and leveled out the dirt.

And I began to churn up the grass to create a place for flowers:

The next day we went and purchased some black eyed Susan's and mums!

If you look closely you will see the mums are a bit damaged. We bought 5 of them on sale for $3.00 each because of the damage. We knew they looked a bit funny, but we were patient to see how they'd progress. This photo was taken last fall (2010) when we planted them. Since then we also updated some of the other unsightly areas of our house front from the purchase date. We replaced this light:

With this light:

 We painted our house numbers from gold:

To black:

Took off the front door:

Painted it black...

Temporarily forgot how to use my camera, hence the blue hue. Painted the shutters from faded green to black:

We added a welcome mat:

We spray painted the Craigslist white wicker furniture that we purchased, espresso brown:

It was really pretty and why I don't have a completed photo I have no idea. The lazy us kept saying that we need to finish the wicker set by protecting the paint...but we never got around to it. So after torrential April and May downpours and neglecting to either cover up or move the furniture into the garage, it eventually succumbed to the elements and is now a white and brown speckled set:

Yep, we are those people. I was even going to re-cover the cushions in this lovely burnt orange fabric but once I realized that the outdoor canvas fabric was $19.99 a yard and I was only able to get one cushion covered; it just made since to purchase new cushions.

Oh, and back to that torrential rain this past spring that I previously mentioned, though it kind of messed up the wicker (along with our neglect of course) it did cause our little decrepit mums to grow into a rather large mum hedge of sorts.  People would say "have you always had that hedge?". We'd respond, it's actually 5 mums all melded into what looks like a large hedge. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of it. We weren't sure how to feel about it and thought about cutting them back due to their size. That is until August hit. Almost suddenly that giant green hedge that just a year ago were 5 small decrepit mums turned into a beautiful red mum vision.

So there you have it. For the most part the seating area is finished. Now we just need to fill our flower boxes with fall flowers and gourds and add a wreath! What you can't see in this view is that there are purple and white petunias planted on the inside of the green bushes. Those are for us to look at when we are sitting in the area; they also look great from inside the house. There were also petunias in front of the mums for passersby to see (last year we had black eyed Susan's in front of the mums). Unfortunately the overgrown mums blocked them from getting any sun and they soon died. The floral decor will of course change with the season but I have to say we did pretty good in comparison to our not to scale photoshopped image:

And it's a far cry from where it was when we moved in:

Can you believe it. We're done! I finally have my "front porch" of sorts :-)

Tatum

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