Our Farmhouse Front Porch

I know everyone else is showing Christmas décor on their blogs by now but I just had to share our front porch with you guys!! We have had the warmest November and we have taken full advantage of it by putting all of our efforts into our front porch. We normally have snow fall by now but we have been having 60 to 70 degree days. But anyways....here is our front porch!!!

We have lived in our farmhouse over 7 years now and for 7 years the front of it has driven me nuts! The vinyl siding was dirty and beyond helping, the steps were rotting and black with mold and the railing came off every time you touched it, there was black smoke on everything from the pellet stove pipe, chipping paint on the floor and railings!! There were just always other things that were more important to address so this always got put on the back burner. It took us all summer and most of the fall to finish this renovation but I can finally say I am not embarrassed by my front porch anymore and I can't even begin to tell you happy that makes me!

Before

We started by taking down the aluminum ceiling in the hopes that there would be an awesome beadboard ceiling or something underneath.

No such luck...it was plaster and lath and about million kinds of nests from various creatures.

Next was taking off the vinyl siding, underneath it was a cement fiber board siding, and then underneath it was the original clapboard. I was soooooo happy to see that original clapboard under there, we had a feeling it was there but you just never know.

Other than being dirty the clapboard was in great condition, I guess there was a positive to all of those layers of ugly siding over it all these years. We gave the clapboard a good sanding and a good scrub and then primed and painted it Glidden's White on White.

Putting in new windows is really what made the difference, that was when we really started to see it all come together. A BIG THANK YOU if bought any of my pillows that I make and sell on Etsy or bought anything from me at the Springfield Extravaganza because that is how I pay for any windows that we ever buy. It made me sad to take out the original windows, when we first bought the house I vowed never to do that and I feel bad that we did. But many of them had broken panes and were painted shut or did not work all anymore, and all of the framing around them was rotted. Plus I like consistency and want all of our windows to be the same...eventually anyways. We do save every single one though because I plan to use them in some other way eventually (hopefully my future shop or something).

The windows are made by Andersen, we special order them through the Home Depot.

 The day we took these steps off was one of the best days of my life, they were not original to the house and they weren't well built and they were black with rot. They also didn't seem to fit the space right so we wanted wider ones that seemed more fitting and appropriate to the time period our house was built.

We also sanded the porch floor really well (we used the belt sander we had rented to sand the dining room floors and it took almost no time) and then I primed it with this Rustoleum

Restore Deck Start Wood Primer. This primer is knew to me. I had picked it up on a whim awhile back because it was on clearance for $10.00 and I knew I would eventually need it. It has a very different consistency than most primers, it almost looks like glue and goes on clear.

Originally I was going to paint the porch after I primed it but I could see that as the primer was drying it was giving the wood the most beautiful color. The porch floor is old but is not original to the house so it didn't have that old wood look to it but the primer made it look that way! I was so excited and it meant I didn't have to hurry and get the floor painted before winter!

I wanted a light that looked like an old oil lamp and the only place I could find one was on ebay. It came from China without any instructions and with different colored wires than Americans use to tell hot and neutral but Neal figured it out much to his dismay:) I just love the way it looks, especially at night from the road.

Neal bought me this adorable little table at the Springfield Extravaganza. He gets antsy sitting in the booth and likes to go out looking for goodies for us. Fine by me...how cute is this table?? I love when I see him walking back with something.  It was rotted on the bottoms of the legs and sat crooked so he sawed them off and then I painted the whole thing Glidden's Antique White. I painted the two $2 thrift store chairs the same and made a little sitting area for us.

I hung a little $12 shelf I bought at Hobby Lobby, I love Hobby Lobby, they have such good stuff that you just can't find anywhere else.

A wicker couch that I bought at a thrift store years ago and flea market furniture make for a little sitting area on the other end of the porch.

I made all of the pillows on the sofa and the cushion I bought at TJMaxx.

And how pretty is this blue stripe from farmhousewares.com ?! I wanted a rug for this area but I wanted it to be machine washable being outside and all and it also needed to be the right size for this space. Then I spotted this one online and I knew it was perfect!!

The brick path was one of the first things we did when we moved in. It had been a poured cement walkway that was all broken up with weeds coming through. We rented a jack hammer and removed it and I am sure our neighbors thought it was a weird thing to be focusing on with all of the other terrible eye sores but it was one of those things that just had to go immediately. And I knew the brick path would to lead to a pretty entrance someday:)

I hope you enjoyed seeing our front porch FINALLY!! Thank you guys for always waiting so patiently!! I know that I sure am enjoying it!!  It has been so fun decorating it for Halloween and fall and I just can't wait to decorate it for Christmas!!! Special thanks to my husband for working so hard on all of this...he always does but he really has been a work machine on this one.

***House exterior is painted Glidden's White on White

***Door is painted Better Homes and Garden's Porch Gray which has been discontinued but I am working on finding a color match (or getting my own paint line, wink wink) for people because I get so many questions about it.

Clapboard Siding

Oh happy day! We have one little section of our house sided with clapboard!

Neal and Eli worked hard all fall to get the siding up on this section of our house.

We are using cedar siding intermixed with pieces of the original clapboard siding that we have been trying to salvage as we go. Sadly the original clapboard is so old and brittle that most of it breaks as we remove it from the house so we only get a good piece here and there.

I filled the holes in the original clapboard (the blue pieces) with wood filler and then sanded them. Once I had it all painted with Glidden's paint color "White on White" you could not tell the difference between the two types.

The above picture shows why the original clapboard is in such bad shape. Unfortunately it was covered not only with one layer of fiber cement board but then aluminum on top of that trapping inside years of water damage that lead to moisture build up and rot. Oh how I wish that the previous owners had just left it wood siding. The worst thing you can do to an old house is put layer upon layer of materials because you will inevitably cause moisture build up. On top of it you can't see what areas are being damaged or rotting. Both the inside of our farmhouse and the exterior had that done to them. You can see the new wood that we put up on the right side of the above picture. The day that we have all of the aluminum and cement board siding off of the house will be the greatest day in my book.

This little side porch is all we can afford to do for now though. I promise to show this side of the house in it's entirety at some point but right now it is a work in progress. This is not our front door but it is the way most people come in because it is where our driveway comes up to.  This whole area was a rotting screen porch that we tore off. I will show before and afters someday and you won't believe the difference.

Just like everywhere else we have renovated so far we tried to save every penny possible. The door was free from a family friend. I  painted it "Porch Gray" by Better Homes and Gardens. To me it is the perfect door color because it goes with everything. Right now it looks great with the pumpkins but come Christmas it will go nicely with green and red and then come spring it compliments all of our purple bushes and flowers.

The window was $20 at a garage sale and matches with the rest of the double hung windows we have put in. And the light (from Walmart)  is just like the one in our bathroom but only made for exteriors and comes on at dusk and goes off at dawn. Isn't that genius! No more coming home to a dark house!

I was so excited to have a cute porch to put pumpkins on this year. As I explained the exterior of our house is in rough shape and I always felt like any seasonal decorating I did out here was like putting lipstick on a pig. But now at least I have this one little area that I can make cute.

Sadly when it came time to do the trim work out here we had nothing to go on because almost all of the original trim has been removed from our house. And when I went to research what measurement pre-1900 farmhouse trim would have been I found almost nothing. I wanted it to look substantial but not too bulky so we went with five inch casings around the windows and door. Then Neal added a drip edge to the tops of the trim to give it that authentic old house feel.

We don't have railings up yet but definitely by next summer because our little Millie will be learning to walk by then!