life and puppies

Since moving into our new abode in April 2014, one thing has remained constant: the front porch has been used as a storage space. And it’s been totally embarrassing. On Saturday morning, it looked like this:

Not pretty.

Yep, there were still moving boxes out there. And very icky carpeting. So, my task, which I chose to accept because I assigned it to myself, was to make the porch a usable, reasonable-looking space in one day’s time. And without spending any money (at least at this point, but I am coming for you, boob light number ten!). And by using as many of the materials found on the porch as possible in order to minimize having to move things into the basement. And to be unsentimental in tossing things that have been out there for more than a year and a half and out of use. Also, there were about 700 pictures out on the porch that needed to get up on the walls. A lot of them were things purchased or framed or gifted (or a combo of these) long ago that aren’t really my taste anymore (see: Renaissance art), but are perfectly decent pieces of artwork and deserve to have some wall space. At least for now. So, with all of that in mind, it was: ready, set, makeover!

The first order of business was to fix that God-forsaken nasty carpet situation. What on Earth was going on with that? It needed to be covered STAT. I realized that I was holding on to those carpet squares that had never quite worked out for us the first go round. In fact, you can see them in a pile in the picture above. I didn’t have any of the sticky stuff left to put the tiles together, but I wondered if I could just kinda place them together and hope for the best. About two seconds after having that thought, though, I realized that while we may not own the official sticky stuff, we surely had duct tape and that should work for this type of project, right? Why not?

Mollybear had to be talked into the checkerboard pattern, but once on board, she did a great job jumping on the tiles to secure the tape in place. I ended up a little bit short tile-wise, but I had decided I wanted to layer the space with another rug anyway (remember, minimize moving things into the basement!) so I put this yellow number up against the wall to cover the few inches of icky carpet that the tiles weren’t able to reach.

This is a chair that we bought in Richmond that I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to sell on Craigslist, but I’m now happy has ended up still in our house. That little blue blanket on the arm is covering a puncture wound inflicted by one dog or another (not Gracie, I’m sure) and is actually Bear’s first stroller blanket and I’m not too keen to get rid of it. Two Wisconsin Film Fest pictures are poorly framed and hung too close together on the wall, but look here, folks. There are things on the wall! Let’s remember the point of this project, ok? Getting things off the floor and onto the walls! 

Looking from the other direction shows the firewood bin that we bought at the antique store between dogs. It made for a fun toy bin (I painted it) for about two seconds before Gertie and then Phoebe showed up. For now, it is housing a printer and a bunch of paper and other miscellaneous-crap-I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-but-is-stored-nicely-in-that-chevron-bin.

This is my grandma’s one-thousand pound vanity. Some of the drawers are a colossal pain to open. I have moved this thing way way WAY too many times. Maybe M-Bear will want it someday. For the foreseeable future, though, it’s going to be in this corner of the porch, housing some cords in that lower left-hand drawer and some sandwich cutters in interesting shapes in the upper right (note to Kate: if you forget where those cut-outs are, you put them right there).

It’s not going to win me a show on HGTV, but I’m pretty psyched that the porch is cleaned out and the space is usable and the carpet is covered. Phew.

And now, about that boob light…