It’s been quite a while since we’ve made a significant home improvement, and I couldn’t be happier to return! (Just in time for us to do some more traveling. But, hey, progress is progress.)
Last week, we made some changes that transformed our front porch from beige and boring:
To blue and bright:
It’s lovely, isn’t it? Such a breath of fresh air.
Jamie and I have wanted to paint our porch ceiling blue for a while. It’s an old Southern tradition, and one that we noticed among many houses during a recent trip to New Orleans. Superstition has it that blue paint is supposed to ward off ghosts, or “haints”. But that’s not the only benefit. As Apartment Therapy notes, light blue ceilings mimic the sky and can visually extend daylight. They may also keep insects away. Sounds good to me!
After trying a few different shades of blue, we settled on Wave by Eddie Bauer. (We tend to pick paint colors based on what shade looks best, and don’t really have any preference for brand.) The color definitely stands out, which was a plus since houses in our neighborhood tend to lean towards bold exterior hues. Although it’s not subtle, I still think the blue coordinates well with our house color.
I’m not sold on the red door, though. I’m thinking navy could be nice? Now to convince Jamie …
We’ve had that plant stand for a while — it actually came from my mom’s garage — but decided to move it out on the porch along with some potted mums. I can’t wait until they bloom! We also got a new doormat from Target a while back, and the blue stripes coordinate nicely with our new ceiling.
Of course, the porch floor has seen better days. That’s a task we’ll tackle someday down the road; for now, we’ll pretend that the “rustic” look is purposeful.
But let’s not focus on the negatives. The true stars of the show are the hanging lanterns. After scouring both Lowe’s and Home Depot, we discovered that 90% of outdoor lights are wall-mounted or ceiling flush-mounted. Thankfully, despite few options, we were happy with the look and price of the Hampton Bay Outdoor Hanging Lantern.
(Funny enough, those lights are identical to the lantern in the first image in the Apartment Therapy post about haint blue ceilings. I’d say it’s a crazy coincidence, but rather think it’s a sign of how few outdoor hanging lantern options there are in the world.)
I like that you can see them from the street, along with a sliver of blue.
And now that we’ve lived in our house almost a year (seriously, how did time move that fast?!), it’s nice to see that our curb appeal has improved:
Now we just need to do something about that overgrowth. It’s always something …
p.s. I know I said “we” did the work throughout this post, but I had the easy job of picking out the paint color and lanterns. Jamie was responsible for all the heavy lifting: He painted the ceiling and installed the lights, and did a bang-up job doing so. Give him a high five the next time you see him, ok?
