Screen Porch Makeover

Hey all!

Let me introduce you to our screen porch, which we recently gave a makeover (not completely, we still have a few more touch-ups to make. But I am too excited about it not to post. I will post the end result, whenever that happens.) I wanted to write down all of the happenings of this makeover, to share our processes and lessons.

So here goes...

When we moved into our house a year and a half ago, we loved the idea of the spacious 16x17' screen porch on the back, but reeaallly disliked how it looked (see the pictures below. I'm sure you will understand). The people who owned the house before us lined the whole thing in rough plywood and painted it a nasty brown/orange color. (The plywood was actually really helpful for how we wanted to redo the porch, so we were thankful for that, at least. Their color choice was very questionable, however.) So, for the first year of living there, it was basically a storage room for all of the junk we needed to get rid of after moving. Everyone needs a designated space like that, right after a move, right?

This past spring, we decided to begin renovations. We waited until patio furniture started going on sale, bought ourselves some furniture to sit on, and after we cleaned out all of the junk we had been storing in there, and set up our new furniture, we started spending more time out there than we ever had before. But there was still so much to be done.

(My husband should be patio furniture model, eh?) ;)

Here is the inspiration I used for our porch (though we would have screens, and wood floors): White (horizontal) planking and blue/gray bead board ceiling. 

(Pic found on Pinterest from the House of Turquoise Blog)

And so, the renovations began!

We had to start by cleaning it out, because there were tons of spiders who had been calling our porch home (get outaa heeeree...). I swept the little guys out, and tried cleaning off all of the screens (without much luck - thankfully my mom was willing to come over later and give them a deep clean while we were working on landscaping. Thanks Ma!). 

Here are some before pics (sorry about the quality, I don't have a real camera, so I used my phone):

Pretty... right? (mmm... no.)

Josh and I hopped in the truck and went to our second home (Lowe's) and found a killer deal on some cedar planking (if you try a project like this, I wouldn't bank on finding a deal like this, we just happened to be in the right place at the right time. However, there are other cheap ways to do it, this is just how it worked out for us). Lowe's was trying hard to get rid of all kinds of cedar tongue and groove, because some contractor had ordered tons of it and decided to go with something else instead. We got about 30 bundles of six 8' cedar planks for $3 a bundle... originally $20 a bundle. Crazy deal, am I right?! We even got some extra for our future basement finish, and potentially a kitchen backsplash. 

We brought all of the wood home, and started cutting it up and nail-gunning it into the existing brown plywood. Lacy was so happy with us for bringing all of these new chew toys home... I think she has a wood chip from our new landscaping in this picture (she had the best summer ever with all of these projects going on), but she was always carrying around a piece of wood from some project or another. 

Board-by-board, our porch started looking way better. I helped Josh measure, and while he cut the planks, I used a nail gun to attach the planks to the wall. We used a level to be sure all of the planks were perfectly horizontal before securing them, since some pieces were shaped funny. We would put two nails on each end, and two nails continuing in a straight, vertical line from floor to ceiling (I hope that makes sense). Thats it. We did that until the whole place was covered in cedar. There were some tricky parts around the doors, where Josh would have to cut out a section of a plank to fit the corners just right. And he had to trim the top boards to fit the ceiling accurately. For that, he used a utility knife, mostly. 

Already looking SO much better, right? But I still wanted to paint it in some way...

And here is our paint-color-picking story: The only thing about this great cedar deal that wasn't so great at first, was that I had my heart set on buying some cheap wood, throwing that planking up on the walls, and painting it completely. But, since we ended up getting the beautiful, really wonderful-smelling cedar, it suddenly felt wrong to completely paint over it. But I really wanted white... Oh, the conflict.

On some sample planks, I tried different stains and semi-transparent paints to get what I wanted, still allowing the grain and smell of the cedar to come through. Everything I tried worked horribly. I got really frustrated and begged my husband to let me just paint the whole thing. But he coaxed me back to Lowe's, where I ended up finding something I loved, called White Wash Pickling Stain by Minwax. You can use as many coats as you want, making it more and more white, the more coats you apply. We just did one coat so that we would still be able to see the wood grain, and I absolutely love it. Here is an example of what the wood looks like close up. You will see more overall pictures later on:

(P.S. You can buy this cute little print at my shop on Society6!)

(Picture found on the Home Depot Website)

Once we decided on a stain, we stained all of the areas that had cedar planking. Aka, all the walls, but not the ceiling or posts. My dad and mom helped me do all of the painting, and we hammered it out in a weekend, among many other projects. We used some simple foam brushes, which helped the stain to go on smoothly. We did have to be careful not to squeeze the brushes too hard, because they were prone to dripping, especially with how thin and liquidy the stain was. So, just a forewarning, in case any of you want to try painting with foam brushes. We also touched up the trim around the window and doors with a standard white trim paint we had in the basement, from our other trim project that has been underway for a few months now.

Here is what it looked like after we painted, before we did the ceilings:

(Hello Handsome... (: )

Now, to add the bead board ceilings. We went to Lowe's, again (like really, we lived there while we were working on this porch), and bought white primed bead board sheets. They fit perfectly with the size of our ceiling, so there was some trimming Josh had to do, but not a ton. I picked out a paint color on the spot and we bought it. Usually, it takes me forever to pick a paint color and love it. I typically buy a sample and test it before I feel okay with painting with it, but this time was an exception. I loved it right away. It was exactly what I had pictured. 

Anyway, my dad and brother helped Josh put up the ceilings while my mom and Lacy and I cheered them on from the sidelines. There wasn't much we could do anyway...

The boys cut each sheet to size (when needed), covered the back with heavy duty liquid nails, and put them up, piece-by-piece. They had constructed some pretty neat wooden beam things (yes, that is the technical term) with carpet on the ends to help hold the sheets up. You can see them pictured below. Josh then secured the bead board with a nail gun. My description of this portion of the project makes it sound so much quicker and easier than it really is. These guys worked hard! Its easy for me to say, watching from the sidelines, but it was totally worth the work. (:

Then, I was back in the game, and we painted the ceiling that beautiful, perfect color I found. The paint covered up the nail holes and most of the horizontal seams as well. We plan to paint some flat trim the same blue color, and secure them over the vertical seams, eventually. 

(The colors in these pictures look different because of the lighting. I would say the second one is more accurate)

Then, the fun part (okay, it was all fun...)! We got some light fixtures from (guess where) Lowe's and installed them. Our space is already so much more beautiful, and we love using it on mild summer days. There are a few more things I would like to do to it (add crown moulding that we have purchased, paint the floors, touch up the posts, go shopping at some antique stores for some more decor, and maybe add some cafe lights). 

But here is what we have so far. And I love it. (: Stay tuned for updates! (We also hope to landscape the rest of the backyard soon-ish, so that will add to it as well. But that's a whole other story.)

Thanks for reading, friends! I hope it inspires some ideas in you! 

xo

Lauren