The Veranda - Part 1

Oh how I love a good veranda and all that it represents: slow living, connection, inviting friends and passers-by alike to "sit a spell", the welcoming arms of a home, a nod to a gentler time...

In fact, once I even had a blog named "Kristin's Veranda" in the hopes of finding all of those things here on the interwebs (never did).

But even though I have always had a soft spot in my heart for all things related to rambling southern front porches, I never dreamt we'd find one of our very own!

Here we are though, with a nearly-hundred-year-old version of this wrap-around staple of the south, and we are loving it! (how did we ever live without one???)

So enjoy another post of the "Before" and "After"s of the progress we have made thus far. Today, it's Part 1 of the biggest project we've taken on here at Ingleside to date: 

The Porch

What we started with: 

 Not too bad from a distance. Still standing, (mostly) still solid, but when you got up close and personal...

 

 

 

Yeahhhhh...not so pretty. Layers and layers of paint that told the story of its life. I think we counted 6 different colors once the sanding commenced! But all of those layers had just flaked, been painted over, flaked, been painted over, flaked, been painted over... you get the picture. It kind of looked like it had a bad case of leprosy.

We knew a brand new porch would not be in the cards for us, so we hired a woodworker and professional floor refinisher to bring in the big guns and try and give the old girl some serious microdermabrasion. Our goal was realistic: to end up with a porch that looked maybe...a spry 50 years old in the end.

First thing we did was remove the front railings. Going from this:

To this:

 You can also see that some sanding has begun in the above picture...it had to get worse before it got better!

We removed the rails for several reasons:

1. It seemed more welcoming

2. The right rail was quite crooked, which gave the whole house the appearance of being a bit lopsided

3. We were putting in a picket fence which we thought would just be too visually busy (pickets upon pickets)

4. We hoped it would open up the porch to the front yard making it all one big entertaining space

100% glad we did!

A small thing that made a big difference in sprucing her up was having our carpenter saw off the warped and rotting ends of the tongue-in-groove boards and replace it with a new end-cap around the perimeter. 

Before:

 After:

 Another thing in desperate need of replacement was the ceiling. It was beadboard, but sagging, gapping, bowed, weirdly textured, very tired beadboard:

So, up went a fresh run:

Painted "Haint Blue" of course. If you live in the south and have a front porch...you know all about haint blue. - Our color of choice was Sherwin Williams: Windowpane.

We thought about replacing the rails, but went the cheaper route - a light sanding and new coat of paint. They are still the most aged looking part of the porch, but definitely look better.

They went from this:

 To this:

 And because of the major picture overload, that's all for today. But be sure and come back for Part 2 next week to see more details of our porch reno adventure!