This year I’ve decided to take on the One Room Challenge! It’s a biannual event where designers make over one room over the course of six weeks. 20 designers take on the challenge and guests are encouraged to participate, as well.

I’m participating this year as a guest and I’ve decided to make over our porch! It’s not exactly a “room,” but it counts, y’all! We’ve done a lot of work on the exterior of the house, but I want to get a few more things done before it gets too cold, so I thought this would be the perfect kick in the pants!

The designers and the guests blog about their progress each week, so I hope this will give me a bit more incentive to talk about the step-by-step progress– which admittedly, I’m not very good at. I like to just get ‘er done! And post pics later– way later! 😀

My inspiration, as you can see from my mood board above, is “Rustic Modern.” It’s a little bit farmhouse, but not too shabby, just clean and modern.

Wanna hear the punch list? It’s a little bit frightening!

• Clean and paint the foundation
• Clean and paint the porch
• Paint eaves and around the door
• Repaint the porch furniture
• Build railings for the porch
• Wrap old support beams
• Build new steps
• Put in gravel for new sidewalk (and new driveway?)
• Fill in old sidewalk with dirt and grass
• Install new ceiling on porch (or paint?)
• Install new lighting
• Cut and put down edging
• Build (or buy) planter boxes
• Put down landscape fabric and mulch
• Plant bushes and shrubs
• Style!
• Get it done in six weeks and don’t over-spend!

My parents are coming up next week to help me power-wash the house and towards the end of the project, George will help me with some of the building and spreading gravel, but a lot of this project will be up to me. I’m nervous about it because I know all that painting is going to be difficult by myself, but I’m just telling myself, “nothing to it, but to do it!”

So, let’s get on to those “before” photos!

Luckily, we have done some work to the outside already. We’ve cut down giant trees that were in our power lines. We’ve done some landscaping, broken up the old sidewalk and we’ve paid to have new siding put on the house. So, there’s that!

Here’s what the house looked like when we bought it:

Be sure to check out the other guest participating in the challenge here. And the designers here. It’s gonna be a fun one, y’all!