Look How Far I’ve Come! (Front Porch Then And Now)

I’m slowly but surely getting this front porch makeover closer to a stopping point so that I can take a break from working in this central Texas heat and focus on an indoor project for the rest of the summer. But I won’t stop until I’ve reached my goal of getting the front porch finished.

The good news is that I’m finished with the repair work on the columns, and they now have a fresh coat of white paint on them. The bad news is that I still haven’t finished the fascia boards around the porch above the new skirting. BUT I WILL!! I promise, I will. And I promise that I’m not putting it off just to irritate y’all. 😀 I’m just doing projects as I feel inspired to do them so that I can keep the momentum going, and I felt inspired to do the much easier job of repairing and repainting those columns. I’m having trouble getting that last rotted skirting board off, so forcing myself to do that would cause me to lose motivation and momentum. But I promise, I’ll get it done before I wrap up these outdoor projects and head inside for the rest of the summer.

I’m really excited about the progress, and I’m so relieved that it worked out for me to repair the existing columns rather than completely redo them at this time. Completely redoing them would have been a huge project, and I may still end up having to do that in the future. But I think I’ve at least bought myself a few more years before I’ll have to go that route. And these very well may last indefinitely if I give them a fresh coat of paint each year to keep the wood safe from rain.

I have a few more paint touchups I want to do, and then I’ll finish up the fascia boards (let’s hope I can figure out how to get that side board off), and then I’ll put new tape lights up, put up the new lights by the door, stain the porch boards, and call it quits for now. Honestly, I’d love to keep going because I have thoroughly enjoyed working outside and making progress on these outdoor projects, but as the temperature rises, I can feel myself getting slower and slower with the progress. But I’ll be anxious to get back outside and work on more outdoor projects as soon as I’m finished with the storage room and the temperature starts to come back down in the fall. Of course, I’ll also want to get started on the sunroom, so we’ll see how it goes as I try to juggle those two goals.

So while the front porch is still unfinished, and I still have a few projects that I want to finish up, I want to remind y’all just how far this front porch has come. I know many of you have been with me from the beginning, since the day we moved into this house. But even though I’m the one who’s done the work, and I’ve seen the whole thing from beginning to present, I still find myself shocked when I come across pictures of how this front porch area started out when we bought the house. That’s exactly how I felt a couple of days ago when I was scrolling through these old pictures.

As soon as I get the rest of these projects finished on the front porch and get all of my tools put away, I’ll take some new photos from the street and show you more comparison pictures of how it looked then vs. how it looks now. And once the fall weather gets here, I’m hoping I can actually get at least a little bit of landscaping done. Now that the porch skirting is finished, I’m feeling really motivated to get some planting beds in and get some plants in the ground. And I’m still keeping an eye out for the perfect water feature to put in front of the breakfast room windows. I’ve made a lot of progress, but there’s still so much to do!