ORC Week 1 – My Side Porch

One Room Challenge Week 1

Last year this time I was attempting my first One Room Challenge as a Guest Participant. It was fun so I did again this past fall. For some reason I am a glutton for punishment over here and want to put myself on a deadline once again. As crazy as it is, it is good for me and it helps me enjoy my house in transition. It’s spring around here and yesterday it was 70 degrees outside. We are ready to be outside and I thought I would makeover my side porch.

If you have followed me long enough you have heard me say that we bought our house by walking into an estate sale. The above photo is what it looked like when we went under contract a few weeks later. Yikes!

Getting her cleaned out made a HUGE Difference. Take note of the LARGE tree. We are FAR from finished with the exterior of our house. Yet, the first landscaping project we did was remove the huge trees. Not only where the roots causing major problems in the basement, they were keeping me from being a nosy neighbor! Just kidding…kinda. Check out below the over grown problem we had going on.

Crazy right!!!??? You could not see out our front windows. Did you even know there are windows on the first floor? Do you even know I have a side porch?

Just to get a sense of scale. That is my husband and my neighbor chopping those bad boys down. They were diseased, filled with mice (yes you read that right), and killing the stability of the foundation walls.

This was after we removed the stumps and cleaned it all up. We couldn’t even attempt to focus on the exterior until those trees were gone. We have moved this house forward since this picture but this challenge is not about the exterior of the house… its about the side porch. Now you can see where it exists on the house. “I can see clearly now the rain tree is gone… “

The truth is the original side porch was not enclosed with screens when the house was built in 1917. The screens and door were sloppily added in the 80s.

The porch goes the full side length of the house and overlooks the front yard and the back yard. I can watch my kiddo play and be a nosy neighbor? Yes please!

To get oriented where it fits in the home, you can see the two sets of french doors flank my fireplace in my living room.

As you can see above the screens had to go. For those of you who don’t know Kansas… its windy here. Every time the wind blew you got a new allergy from all the dust in the screens. I ripped the screens down a few years ago but kept the frames.

Last summer, while my son was at a friends house I grabbed my reciprocating saw and went to town on the screen frames. You can also see the porch has become the holding zone for all things headed to the thrift store. Last summer it held the contents of our garage while we poured a new floor foundation. Talk about some pretty curb appeal from the street.

We have neglected this little space. It’s time to enjoy the porch spruce her up a little. Come back next week for the big plan.

Make sure you check out all the featured designers this spring. I am always inspired by their amazing spaces.

Of course I am pumped as always to see all the guest participant spaces.