Jazzing Up a Porch For Springtime Enjoyment

Welcome to the 275th Metamorphosis Monday!

I love, love, love how the days are getting longer. Okay, the days aren’t really getting longer but you know what I mean. The daylight is staying with us more and more and I just love it!

With more daylight hours for playing, it’s time to get out there and spruce up our outdoor spaces and that’s exactly what Mary and Dave from Front Porch Ideas and More did with their porch.

Mary’s sharing her spring porch makeover today and I know you’re going to love it as much as I did! Here’s Mary to fill you in on all the details.

Porch Freshened Up for Spring

 

Dave and I are quite honored to be sharing our porch here at BNOTP, a friendly community of seasoned porch lovers!  Susan is, of course, a true porch lover and so we take great pride in showing off our cottage-style porch with each of you on this Metamorphosis Monday.  As porch lovers, we can all appreciate small tweaks that make our porches great getaway spaces.

Along those lines, we just gave our porch a good spring cleaning. Our porch was covered with yellow pollen, dust and leftover dirt and leaves from the winter.  Although spring cleaning can be a little boring perhaps, I found two silver linings.

The first silver lining is the great feeling you get when you really give a room a good cleaning.  Yes, I consider our porch a room.

The second silver lining was the makeover we gave our porch rug.  When we bought our rug last year, I knew it was plain, maybe even a little on the blah side. I decided that while I was spring cleaning, it was a great time to give it some extra color to jazz it up.

So I decided to paint a pretty check pattern on it to give it a mini makeover. By the time I was all done, our porch was not only sparking clean and fresh, but more colorful and inviting, too. Let me walk you through the steps we took to not only clean our porch, but also to transform our plain rug into something brighter and more cheerful.

Prepare Your Porch For Spring

 

First, I vacuumed the porch rug and removed the furniture from the porch – the tables, chairs and pots. Shhh, please don’t tell anyone that our rug is not the outdoor variety.  We have an outdoor area rug on our back porch and honestly, I cannot tell the difference between the two.  Can you?

Pressue Wash a Porch to Remove Pollen

 

Next I swept off the porch as best as I could to remove the leaves and dirt from the winter as well as the cobwebs. Then I used our power washer to hose down the porch floor.  If you don’t have a power washer, a hose would do fine, too.  Always test your power washer to be sure it’s not too strong for your porch floor.

Spruce Up the Porch for Springtime

 

Then I washed the front windows to make them sparkle again and I also gently washed down the furniture with a bucket of warm soapy water.  I let it all dry for a few hours.

Paint Stencil a Rug for the Porch

 

Meanwhile, I took the rug upstairs to my craft room to get it ready to be painted. I decided upon painting a checkered pattern on the rug. So, not having a stencil (and later realizing I could have rather easily created one), I used duct tape to tape off rows both horizontally and vertically to make a checkered pattern.

Stencil or a Paint a Rug for a Deck or Porch

 

Yes, the process was easy but I will admit it was a little tedious to apply the duct tape. Our rug is 5 ft by 8 ft and I used a big roll of duct tape on it for the masking.  Once the tape was on the rug, then I began sponging the checks with just a section of an inexpensive sponge and a bit of blue paint.  I was careful not to put too much paint on the sponge as I did not want any paint to seep under the duct tape.

Rug Painted for a Porch or Deck

 

At first I planned on all the checks being the same color, light aqua blue.  However, the closer I got done with sponging the paint on, I wondered how it would look with more than one shade of blue. Looking in our paint cabinet I found two more shades of blue that would work. So I got busy sponging on those other blues in random places.

Paint or Stencil a Rug

 

After the paint dried, I moved the rug back to the porch. The most fun part was pulling up the duct tape and seeing the results.  Had I not rolled up the sticky duct tape into a ball, it was kind of like artwork itself.

Paint or Stencil a Plain Rug for a New Look

 

Both Dave and I were very happy with the results. Using more than one color of blue makes the rug more visually interesting, colorful and lively. I could have just painted part of the rug, such as the outer border or a stripe across either end.  Just imagine the patterns you could do – plaid, stripes, diamonds, polka dots or basket weave. Endless possibilities.

Decorate and Spruce Up a Porch For Spring and Summer

 

By the next day, we had our porch back together and how good that felt. The porch was clean and inviting and our newly painted rug was a bonus.  In looking at our photos, I am surprised at how much brighter our rug looks with its new blue checkered pattern. That was a project I would enjoy doing again!

Thank you for visiting our porch today and remember to make your porch happy this spring with a good cleaning and sprucing up. It puts a fresh spin on your home and is guaranteed to put a smile on your face.  Dave and I would love to have you stop by our porch decorating section  to get ideas for your perfect porch.

 

Looking forward to all the Before and Afters linked for this Met Monday!

One on sidebar

 

If you are participating in Metamorphosis Monday, you will need to link up the “permalink” to your MM post and not your general blog address. To get your permalink, click on your post name, then just copy and paste the address that shows up in the address bar at the top of your blog, into the “url” box for InLinkz.

In order to link up, you’ll need to include a link in your MM post back to the party so the other participants will have an opportunity to receive visits from your wonderful blog readers.

Please observe these few rules:

Only link up Before and After posts that are home, gardening, crafting, painting, sewing, cooking, DIY related.

Do not link up if you’re doing so to promote a website or product.

Do not link up a post that was just linked last week since a lot of readers will have already seen that post.


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Comments

  1. I love Mary and Dave’s porch…so cute! The rug treatment is such a fun idea! Thanks for hosting!…hugs…Debbie

  2. Mary and Dave ‘s porch is so inviting and the rug turned out beautifully! Thanks for another great party 🙂

  3. Good morning! What a lovely spring day for a porch party! Thanks again for hosting!!

  4. hi Susan, wow, I am so impressed with that painted rug, I can’t wait to try something like that! Her porch is so welcoming, she thought of everything! Thanks for sharing a great transformation, such a fun way to get the Monday creative juices flowing!

  5. What a great looking porch transformation! Great job, Mary and Dave! Susan, so many wonderful guest have already arrived for your grand party, always awesome to see!

  6. Thank you for hosting, Susan! I love Mary’s porch. The idea of painting the rug is genius!

  7. cleaning the porch is alot of work. I love the idea of painting a rug to work with the space. enjoy!

  8. That rug turned out so pretty. Such a great idea! laurie

  9. Hi Susan! Oh, what a wonderful porch rug and how easy this would be to do! Thank you for hosting and hope you’re doing well.
    Be a sweetie,
    Shelia 🙂

  10. Mary, your porch is so pretty! Love those pillows you’ve chosen. I kind of laughed when you said you consider your porch a room. I do too! We also power wash and scrub out there a few times per summer. Makes it so much nicer. I always love seeing other’s porches.

  11. Morning, Susan! Painting the rug made quite a difference! LOVE these long hours, Dearest and I find ourselves spending a lot of time in the garden now. I do appreciate you hosting,
    Kathy

  12. Thanx for hosting Susan! Happy to be joining this week. Hope your weekend was a good one.

  13. I love what they did with the rug – looks easy and looks great. They have a great blog, too!

  14. LOVE that front porch! I need to give mine some attention! Thanks for hosting! Life to the full! Melissa

  15. Mary and Dave’s porch is so charming and very inviting. I really like the rug makeover! Thanks so much for hosting, Susan!

  16. Suzanne of Simply Suzannes at Home

    Thanks so much for hosting, Susan!
    Your rug looks fantastic!
    Have a great week,
    Suzanne

  17. Love, love the porch rug!…and the porch is so very charming!!…Love Mary and Dave’s Front Porch Ideas and More…and was fortunate to have them feature one of my porches a while back…Thanks for hosting Susan…Have a wonderful week!!!..

  18. Mary and Dave did a great job with their porch…I am pea green! My screened in porch is just itching to be cleaned and decorated for the warm days, but I have to wait until this silly pollen burst is over! I am just collecting ideas in the meantime! Thanks for the party! 🙂 Kim

  19. Thanks for sharing Mary’s porch updates. I love that rug!!! Susan, thank you for hosting this wonderful, inspiring link-up each week. It’s my favorite. 🙂

  20. Love the porch spring clean up! Looks fantastic. Thanks so much for hosting. Enjoy your Monday.
    KC

  21. That rug is fantastic — great idea.

  22. Love Mary’s rug. Thanks for sharing her porch update and for hosting. Hope you have a great week.
    K.

  23. Mary and Dave’s porch looks so nice after being cleaned up for spring. I’ll bet that they are really enjoying using it now that it is warm.

    Thanks for hosting!

  24. I love that porch–so welcoming and pretty! Thanks for hosting the party, Susan! 🙂

  25. Debbie refresh resytle says

    Great porch make-over Mary and Dave! Love all the fresh color 🙂
    Thanks for hosting!
    Debbie

  26. What a charming porch they’ve created, Susan! And such a creative way to upcycle a plain old rug! 🙂 Could you tell me where Mary bought her fabulous farmhouse style porch lights? I’m looking for some just like that for my front porch! 🙂

    xoxo laurie

  27. I love the rug!! Thanks so much for hosting every week! And have a great one!!

  28. First off thanks so much for hosting Susan,and secondly…..I love that simple rug transformation.So funny I just found a Pottery barn rug just like that…but it’s huge! We just had our screened in porch installed and we can’t paint our floors until they are dried out…probably the fall.So I added a huge rug that I scored for free as a temporary fix.But it’s sort of blah for my shabby porch.I am going to paint it and you inspired me to try a pattern thank you 🙂
    xx
    Anne

  29. Dave and I are very honored to be featured on BNOTP. Thank you all SO much for your wonderful comments about our porch.

  30. Wow, what an amazing DIYer your friend is, she did such an awesome job with her porch! Thank you for hosting and sharing dear Susan…and YES! I love that simple, BUT great rug at the same token!
    Have a lovely week Susan.
    FABBY

  31. Adorable! I love those colors–has almost a Mediterranean feel! I’d definitely spend as much time as possible out there–looks so lovely. Thanks for hosting the linky this week!

  32. Mary’s porch is so sweet and inviting! Thanks for sharing it with us.

    Big Texas Hugs,
    Susan and Bentley

  33. I would love to just sit and visit with you. It’s so welcoming. Thanks for hosting.

    Shannon ~ bohemianjunktion.com

  34. Thanks for hosting the party. I loooove what you did with that rug!

  35. “Out standing” on your “new” rug!! That was brilliant with the shaded blue paints!! Perhaps a “Cottage (porch) Industry” for you two!! franki

  36. Thanks for sharing Mary’s porch! Cute project. Thanks for making Mondays more interesting!

  37. Your rug is sooooo stinking cute!!! Love the squares design… 🙂
    “hugs” Crystelle
    Crystelle Boutique

  38. Thanks so much for hosting. What a great idea on the rug.

  39. Dave and I are very appreciative of everyone’s kind comments about our porch and painted rug project. So happy that Susan invited us to share this with you. Thank you all so much! And just to say – the rug project is a fun, easy way to jazz up an otherwise plain rug. We had fun doing it.

  40. I love how the rug turned out. The porch looks awesome. Thanks for sharing this. And thanks for hosting this lovely party.

  41. Thanks so much for hosting the party! Enjoyed reading the posts while sipping my morning decaf.
    Enjoy your day.

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