I had some time on my hands this weekend, so I decided to start a project I’ve been thinking about for months.

I wanted to paint the porches on the front of our house white. I do like having stained wood floors, but all the railings needed a new look. We actually have 4 porches/decks on our house (which have to be stained all.the.time.)-so, I thought paint would cut down on our annual work and make the exterior more polished.

Priming a good chunk of your house is always a fun way to scare the neighbors. Is there a more unflattering color then “primer white?” Well there was that one time I gel stained my door and started with a good coat of “Glazed Pecan.”

 I still think the primer wins though.

Even though the primer is hideous, as soon as I painted the railings I knew I’d made the right decision. I love the way the plants pop against the white. When it came time to choose a shade of white, I started out with Behr’s Ultra Pure White but found it to be too bright. I went back to Home Depot and had it tinted to “White Fur” which is a little bit creamier.

I love, love, love it! I still have to work on the upstairs deck and get around to stripping and staining the floors (I’m thinking a walnut to match the door). You can see in the upper left on the pole where I’m working on filling some of the large cracks with Minwax High Performance Wood Filler. I read a lot about repairing large cracks before I started, and the verdict was that basically nothing works very well in an outdoor setting. The wood expands and contracts with weather, making most fillers fail pretty quickly. But I decided to give the Minwax a shot, so we’ll see how it holds up. It’s definitely more heavy duty than the Elmer’s I use for furniture. I was less concerned with getting a perfectly smooth look than keeping the water/rot/mildew out.

I can’t wait to get the upstairs finished and share it with you! I think painting the base of the upstairs deck to match the right side will really make a huge impact. The lack of continuity there has always kinda bugged me. Just for fun, here’s how the house looked in 2008 (when we just put in most of the landscaping).

Once the porches are finished, I think I’m finally going to take some updated pictures of the exterior!

6 Responses

  1. Sue

    That looks great! I agree with the continuity being much better. I have a deck over me, like you, and the unfinished look of the “ceiling” the 2nd story balcony makes has always bothered me. I have played with the idea of adding wood to the existing beams, and then painting them, to give it a more historic look and feel. Any ideas??

    Reply
    • Lovely Crafty Home

      Sue…yeah I have thought of that too! Our problem is that after 4.5 years of not taking great care of our decks, the wood is really splitting. I thought that adding anything fancy might just look weird. I love the idea of boxing out the columns more and adding crown or something though. If your wood is in decent shape I would definitely experiment a bit! As for the underside of the top deck, my plans are to come up ith a DIY version of the underdecking waterproofing system involving a beadboard look…somehow…Have you ever seen these ceiling systems?

      Reply

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