One Room Challenge - Curb Appeal the Reveal!

First off, I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you to Linda at Calling it Home for hosting this awesome experience otherwise know the One Room Challenge.  This is a platform allowing us all to follow along as 20 design bloggers redesign a space.  She also graciously allows anyone with a blog to link up and share a makeover we are working on.

The first time I participated in the ORC we redid our laundry room.  Working under a deadline like this is great because it forces you to get it done, but can cause incredible stress if you have anything else going on in your life (family, jobs, you know).

This time around we chose to redo our front porch to add some curb appeal to our house.  We redid the front porch at our first house towards the very end of our life there and I kind of regretted waiting so long to do it.  This time around we figured we would get it out of the way a little earlier on, and I am so glad we did because many of the changes we made impacted the interior of our house as well!  The porch before was very cramped with the railings there that served no purpose.  Because of its size we didn't want to hang out on it, and the mostly solid door made our foyer so dark.

Just those two changes, the door and removing the railings brought so much light into the interior of our home!  We keep thinking that the door is open and go to close it.  I had started thinking that our dining room paint color was too dark but removing the railings even lets more light in there and now I am back to really liking the color.

We have had a hand me down glider on the porch since we moved in, in fact we had it on our old front porch and used it all the time there.  On this porch the railing was right at eye level when sitting on it so it didn't get much use.  Since removing the railings the hubs and I have sat out there with drinks several evenings now.  We added some side tables as a resting place for aforementioned drinks and it is a really comfy spot.

We had a rolling cart on our first front porch and the UPS guy always put our packages on it which was nice.  We had a piece of granite that we bought off of Craig's List intending to use in our master bathroom reno at our first house and decided that we would use that to top a table for the front porch.  The hubs built the base and it looks great in my opinion.

I also knew I wanted some more visual weight on that side of the porch and some extra seating would be nice.  Growing up my mom had a hanging rattan chair, similar to the Serena and Lily version, and I was hoping to find a more budget friendly version.  I think Ikea used to have one but they don't seem to carry it anymore so my search led me to Amazon where I found this one.  It's obviously not quite the same, but offers the same easy vibe to me.  It helps that the kids LOVE it!

We switched out our old, faded shutters for some with a more rustic, farmhouse feel to go along with the new/old door and added some planters to flank the door.  We changed out the light fixtures to some that fit the space a little better and aren't the dated, shiny brass finish and we are calling it done!

For the next little bit you can bet you will find me out here relaxing, probably with a cocktail, unless I am checking out what everyone else's space turned out like!