Real Rooms: The Cape House Porch

Hi! I thought it could be cool to every so often post some pics of real peoples' rooms. Let's see...you qualify as a "real person" if you are a.) not me or b.) not a professional interior designer/decorator (not that we don't love you if you are a professional, but maybe those will be in a separate set of posts!). I'm making these rules up as I go/type, can you tell? So, maybe they'll be friends'/family's spaces or readers' (once I get some). It's always fun to peak inside someone else's home and this way we'll hopefully see alot of different styles that we can appreciate/learn from. Sort of like one of my favorite sites, Rate My Space, but without the star ratings or snarky comments:)

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Let's kick it off with a look at one of Mom and Dad's Cape House rooms, the porch. You might remember (how could you not, I've been blabbing about it for a week now?!) that their house was recently renovated. It used to have a screened in porch where we spent a ton of time, but part of the reno was converting the porch into interior living space. Since we loved the function of it so much, my parents made one of the new rooms into what we call "the porch" even though its totally inside the house. We're also going to do a little mini makeover on this room, so maybe you can help us out with it. The new house is very open concept floor plan, so this is what you see when you enter in the main door we use (not the front door - the other cute little red door on the right).



Off to the right, through that big opening is the kitchen and eat-in dining space.



You can access the dining part of the deck from this side of the porch, through one of the many sliding glass doors.



Perhaps my favorite part of the new porch is the ceiling. Mom wanted it to still have somewhat of a different feel than the rest of the house, so she asked the builders to install beadboard on the ceiling and paint it a pretty sky blue. (All walls are Benjamin Moore Manchester Tan.)


As you can see, Mom is keeping her outdoor porch wicker furniture from the old porch here in the new space. It helps add to that indoor/outdoor living vibe that they are shooting for. However, we figured a little mini-makeover could help bring this spot up to date and more in line with Mom's new look (don't get me wrong, Dad will benefit too but I don't think he cares about such things as pillow cushion color!!). So, she has around $150.00 in Pottery Barn gift cards (that we gave her for Christmas) to spend, and we thought new cushions for the chairs would be a good place to start. These "Tufted Outdoor Cushions" are $29.99 each and are thankfully the right size:) We're thinking the "Stone Classic Stripe" (the first wide-striped one in the pile on the right - that sort of beige/gray color and white) would be perfect...neutral enough to stay classic for awhile, picks up on the wall color and makes a nice backdrop for some more colorful, fun decorative pillows. What do you think?



So, for 3 new cushions we'd spend about $90 and still have some money left over to get new throw pillows. The area rug is staying and Mom thinks she wants to use reds/maroons and olivey/sagey greens as accent colors. So here's a few pillows that could possibly work on the chairs with our new striped cushions:

{the Wool Jaquard}

{the Cottage Floral}

{the Java Floral in red or green}

{the Coral Stripe}

{the Textured Solid}

And of course, I love mixing and matching solids and patterns, so there's that option too. What's your vote? Maybe I'll check out Grandin Road and a few other places and see what they have (of course, our gift card won't work then, but I'm sure we can think of a few other things to buy at PB!).

One other change we are considering....painting the wicker furniture black. Has anyone ever painted wicker before? Do you have tips or photos? Do you think this would look better than the white? (The kitchen which is the room right next door has a black island and the dining set that will eventually go in the eat-in space has black legs and chairs.) I guess we could always update the cushions and pillows and then see how we like it. If we need more of a change, we could try the black?

Thanks for your help!