When we lived in our tiny basement apartment on Capitol Hill, we had to maximize every inch of space. We had a little patio that was sunken beneath the deck in the back yard, and there was a space that was too low to stand, but just right for sitting. So when the wife (the fiancée at the time) was out of town planning our wedding, I made her this porch swing as an engagement present:
Actually, I presented it as a swing that would go with the porch on a house I would buy for her someday.
If I could wave a magic wand and make any change to my house, one thing near the top of the list would be to have a nice, new rear deck that ran the length of the building. But since I’m not going to drop thousands into a deck that I’ll only use for a few years until I sell the place, I decided I could just make some cosmetic changes that might improve the look and utility of the surrounding area.
This was the old landing at the steps to the deck. I thought it would look a little nicer if I just assembled a new landing area that blended in with the existing brick barrier, so I went to Old House Salvage last year and bought a couple hundred used bricks.
We’re finally close to finishing the front porch. After we built a side table and footrest to go with our rocking chair, all we had left to do was build some planter boxes to flank the steps and give us a little privacy. I took care of that this past weekend. This was the original plan:
It’s designed to look like the terracotta pot is suspended by the upper lip, but it’ll really be sitting on cross bars inside the box.
My wife and I bought an Adirondack-style rocker for our front porch a couple of months ago and we thought we’d make a side table and footrest to go with it. I made rocking chair footrests for the in-laws last Christmas, so this was a chance to improve upon my design. This was my concept for the side table:
It’s nothing special; I just want a place to set my drink when I sit down and a place to hang a citronella lantern to keep the mosquitoes at bay.
