The Porch Project

I was reviewing old blog posts and realized that I had neglected to finish one I had started from 2010.  It was a stroll down memory lane for me and I thought you might enjoy it as well.

It was a sad looking little farm house when we first bought the farm. Tired paint colors, strange porch railing, no front steps, broken lattice. Just sad. Sniff.

The Porch - Before

Then Pop devised a plan. He and I bought wood. We bought ballusters, 4x4s, 2x6s, stair treads and risers. We asked for help - lots of it - even more help than wood. We followed Pop's direction and leadership and put the wood together to create a new porch to make the house look happier. Oh, yeah - we also repaired and painted the house. It took us much of the spring and summer. We think it was worth it.

Our renovated porch already holds many memories...late night visits...iced drinks while sitting in rocking chairs...Fourth of July celebrations, etc.  Good stuff.

The Porch - After

Words on my Wall

I had a space I wanted (okay, needed) to fill up above the "pass-through" window between our kitchen and living room.  I checked out custom ordered vinyl lettering but decided it was a bit pricey.  So like any good do-it-yourselfer, I searched Pinterest and came up with what I thought might be a good solution. (here's a link to one of the tutorials I found.)

So I went to work at my computer and found just the right font and figured out the height to make the letters look right in my space.  Then I printed out what I wanted to say and cut/spliced my paper to put it all together.  This is what it looked like when I taped it up on my wall and tried it out for a few days...

Then I took it down and scribbled on the back side of the whole thing...each letter.

After that, I taped it back up in place and traced around each letter, which left a faint outline of the words.

I just now noticed that the word I focused on for the outlining picture is "love".  I think that is perfect.  It makes me smile.

I used an ink jet printer, regular printer paper, transparent tape (of course you could use about any tape), a regular #2 pencil, black acrylic paint, and a small slanted/angled artist paint brush.

I am really happy I gave it a try...now where else do I need to put words on the walls?