In case you missed part one of our porch makeover, check out that post first to see what we started with.
That old, nasty porch is now a distant memory, because this makeover is now officially complete!
Here’s what we get to come home to now…
We knew we wanted to utilize the whole space by creating lots of seating. An outdoor sectional sofa made perfect sense. Rather than buying one out of the box, we decided to go the custom route.
My guy built the sofa frame in three sections. Each box is 48” long x 30” deep x 14” high. We opted to recycle the usable wood from the old deck that we demolished to construct these new boxes. This was the perfect solution because the lumber didn’t have to be pretty (since it was being covered) and it allowed us to save a lot of material from the dumpster.
We then screwed a sheet of 48” long x 30” wide x 3/4” thick plywood to each of the boxes and topped them with 3” thick, high-density foam, resulting in a finished height around 18”.
Next, I sewed slipcovers for each box using, solid, brown, outdoor fabric from Tonic Living. And, BAM, we had seating!
I wanted the outdoor sofa to be really comfy and inviting. What’s the best way to achieve that? Loads of pillows!
It turns out that pillow inserts can get really pricey, really quickly, especially when you need this many of them.
I couldn’t justify the cost of purchasing 20 inserts at $15+ a pop for an outdoor project. Instead, I headed off to my local thrift store and purchased 20 used pillows, in all different shapes and sizes, for less than $3 each. It didn’t matter how ugly they were since they were getting recovered!
After measuring and making patterns for each pillow, I sewed the pillow covers, using outdoor fabric. The chevron stripe and solid, orange fabric is from Tonic Living and the floral print is from Fabricland (of all places).
I opted to cover the fronts and backs of each pillow in a different fabric so that I would have more options when it came to arranging them.
We already had the three tables in front of the sofa. Earlier this year, my guy built them as “lamp pedestals” out of reclaimed barn board for my first Lookbook.
They were taking up space inside, so we figured we’d put them to use as coffee tables outside.
The last building project we took on was the storage box. We originally had our eye on this bench from IKEA, but we would have needed three of them to house all of the pillows… Not very practical!
So, we went the custom route again. My guy built a box (also out of lumber from the old deck) and faced it with fence boards. Not only is it big enough to house all the pillows, but it also fits the space perfectly and can double as a surface for serving food & cocktails.
The finishing touch was adding some greenery. We filled the bed in front of the porch with some two-toned shrubs and scattered a few potted plants around the deck. We chose plants with rich, green leaves and orange flowers to pick up on the fabrics.
There you have it… A few weekends of manual labour, some creative thinking, and a little bit of vision and we’ve come leaps and bounds from the porch we had last month.
I feel a porch party coming on!
Lia Fagan is an interior designer & the creative force behind Mod Pieces, an online boutique, specializing in restyled vintage lighting. When she’s not in her studio, she’s writing about lighting & decor on her blog.
