Front Porch Makeover! DIY & Thrifted House Transformation | What I've Been Up To In Quarantine

Today I'm going to transform this entire porch and I'm hoping that when I'm finished you will not recognize it. We've got the first coat of primer down and I'm ready to get in between these cracks with the black paint and we looked to good old YouTube to see if there was some kind of a hack for how to get down in there without using a paintbrush and kind of shoving it in there. What I did was I took two of these and I cut the little ridges off place them back to back and use some electrical tape to kind of give myself a little bit of a handle and here's how you do it you just kind of dip this in the paint and then it just fits perfectly here. Something super exciting is happening right now I just got up in my attic and apparently I am a lighting hoarder like this is problems you guys. Look at this. What is going on? These are all finds from Habitat for Humanity. Look at that pretty little one right there. It's hot up here. I've picked up most of these lights for only a couple dollars a piece over the years at Habitat for Humanity and when I had a vintage shop my husband and I would rewire one two or three of these different vintage lights each month to sell in our space. Since I started doing YouTube I have not had my vintage mall space so I haven't had time to get to these but I've got some pretty cool pieces up here. I came up here to look at these two shades to see if those would be a good option for the front porch and then I spotted this guy and I don't know if this would work. These actually tilt like spotlights. They came from a mid-century church and I think that they had these kind of like highlighting artwork on the walls but I kind of wonder if that might work. I might take it down and see. Oh my gosh that might look really cool. Yep, back to the winter. It looks like more craftsman style. This was a light that I found at Habitat for Humanity for $4 about two years ago and we're gonna see if we can cut this pole section here and chop it down so it only has about maybe a six inch drop and then I have a different schoolhouse shade that I'm gonna put on here that's just plain white without the design. We're gonna see if we can turn that into our outdoor front porch lighting. A big part of me loves this kind of shabby look because it looks a little bit more rustic and Italian. It's got those kind of you know old-world vibes but I've accepted that it needs a fresh coat of paint so that it looks good with the rest of the house. Are you hungry? Do you want snacks Alvin? Do you need snacks? This is my little pet squirrel. Her name's Alvin. She's so cute. Hey it fits! I picked up this little side table at a garage sale for 50 cents and I think they were surprised I was even willing to offer them 50 cents for it because it's in such rough shape but I'm going to try my best to restore this as good as possible. This is some paint stripper that I already had on hand left over from a project last year so I've got quite a bit left so I'm gonna try that out on here and what you do is you apply it and let it sit for about 30 minutes and then you scrape a little test to see if it's ready to come up. If not you can leave it on for longer. It says on the back you can leave it for up to 24 hours. I'm going to use a paintbrush and pour this on. We're gonna see what happens. It is getting nice and bubbled up. You can see that it's already starting to come off without even scraping so I'm gonna give this about another 20 minutes to go before I scrape it. It's been 25 minutes so far and I think I'm gonna go find some pots that need a little bit of work while I wait on this. This is always the most satisfying part when you just go look at that. Ewww all that gunk. It's disgusting but so awesome at the same time. I've got this sanded down to the raw wood and I've got this entire section here this circle and this circle that were really raised up all the way smoothed down. I scraped off part of it and then I use a sander to get the rest and I think that I'm actually going to paint this baby up to give it an accent color and make it into a little bit of a fun side table. I thought I would try a fun color so I tested out this mint which is a color I just happen to have on hand and I was not digging it so I decided that I'm going to go ahead and do it black with a white base and I'm going to use this wood fill to fill in all of these gaps so that it has a nice smooth surface. I have been going back and forth for the last two days on what color I wanted to paint the plant stand and I have decided I am going to do it black the exact same black as the porch because I feel like there's just a lot going on here and it's looking busy but I really want to use the plant stand and if I paint it black it will kind of match the deck and disappear and then the plants can be the focal point which is what I really wanted. I'm so happy with how this one turned out you know originally I was gonna do a color on this and I think doing the black also did the exact same thing where it kind of just blended it and it lets the terracotta pop and really honestly the plants are what I want to be the main focal point and the egg chair of course. I picked the right day to be doing a DIY in my garage it's pouring it's June and it's pouring outside okay I'm really glad that I'm doing a DIY in my shop today and that I wasn't gonna be doing any more outside painting on my front porch so here's what I'm gonna be doing today this is the wooden plant stand that I got at Goodwill for $6.99 and it needs a makeover so it's going to be painted black the same color as my porch now when you buy a furniture piece that has a finish on it already it's really important before you paint whether you're using a latex paint an outdoor paint or a spray paint you need to remove some of the finish that's on there otherwise your paint is not going to stick properly to it so the first thing I'm going to be doing is hitting it with orbital sander and then I'm going to go in on these areas with a sanding block and kind of just hit it a little bit just to rough it up enough that the paints gonna stick to it good don't forget to use a dust mask it's very important that you are not breathing in any of these chemicals here's what the sanded surface looks like now I'm not refinishing this so it doesn't have to be perfect I'm gonna come in with my little sanding block and kind of hit these little areas that I missed just to give them a little bit of removal and a little bit more texture so that the paint will stick to it but it doesn't have to be perfect because you're gonna be painting over but this gives you that nice smooth finish and the paint's just gonna last longer another thing that's really important is when you get your sanding block make sure you get one that has a point on it because that really helps you get into these little crevices and it really does a good job here's a close-up of what I was just talking about a lot of these come with this angle in it and you can see that when you're getting into those little crevices it makes all the difference because it can get all those different angles and in those tight little nooks and crannies and that's really important because you don't want paint just disappearing out of those chunks and staying everywhere else completely sanded and I'm going to get this cleaned down really well because now you don't want the dust particles to get in the way of the paint this is the paint that I used on my front porch and the good thing about this is it's made for being outdoors and specifically on high traffic areas and it has a low luster enamel finish I think this is going to work really well on this for a plant stand because we get a lot of sideways rain here in Portland Oregon and I think it's gonna need that extra protection the first coat is on and I think this is gonna need three coats because as I sanded off that protectant it makes the wood really porous which is what you want because you want it to absorb the paint not just sit on the surface but it also means that it might take a third coat I'm gonna take a break wash my brush and I'll be back here in a few minutes the front porch is finished and I could not be more happy with how it turned out my main inspiration in redoing the front of our house was Italy every time I've been to Italy I have fallen madly in love with the geraniums overflowing out of the terracotta pots the olive trees and the sweet smell of jasmine everywhere you walk and I knew I wanted to incorporate that into my front porch area we live in a 1911 bungalow and the character just felt like it was lost in the colors that the house was painted before it was painted this butter yellow with forest green trim that had this rustic finish on it and mint green underneath the eaves and on the shops had to go honestly I knew it was gonna be a huge transformation and I knew it was gonna look so much better but it even turned out better than I had hoped my husband is amazing at retrimming out windows and we decided to go for a much more craftsman style and give it a bulkier look and it's unbelievable the difference that it made with the front door it really pops now with the white trim around there our front door is an original piece on this home and it was really cool to be able to finally accent that so you notice the door when you walked up trimming out the windows made such a difference it really makes the windows look a lot larger every single one of my pots has been thrifted they're all secondhand most of them have come from either estate sales garage sales or the Goodwill Outlet believe it or not so just as I was walking out to check out I found these old terracotta pots oh I just thought it was kind of cute gotta make sure it's safe when you're decorating with secondhand items you really want to make sure that it doesn't look like somebody just threw out a bunch of stuff from a yard sale which most of these items are from yard sales and most of them were under a dollar but what I do to give it that intentional design is I have all of my pots terracotta pots they have different designs different patterns they were from different decades but it doesn't matter and it looks intentional because they're all the same type of style I love these geometric plant hangers I scored these at an estate sale a few years back for a dollar a piece my black iron modernist kind of triangle shaped ones were from the great junk hunt I knew it was a little bit of a risk to paint the front porch black but everything in my gut was telling me just go for it just don't hold back do the black porch it's gonna look classic and I'm very happy with how it turned out please let me know in the comments below what do you guys think of my black porch I have a funny story to tell you guys about this egg chair now a lot of you guys may not know the entire process that vintage goes through but this chair is the perfect example about all the different people that you support along the way for those of you who know my best friend Selena the co-host with me on the recycled life here on YouTube this was actually her egg chair to make a long story short Selena found this egg chair at an estate sale in Southern Oregon she then sold it to one of my fellow friend vintage dealers who I bought it from so by the time that I bought it from her it supported the estate sale owners the original owners supported Selena the vintage mall that she sold it at my friend and then now I have it so that's five different people and eventually I will go ahead and pass this on and sell it too so there's a sixth person a lot of times people don't realize when you buy something for hundred dollars how many people you're supporting along the way and the best part about vintage is it holds its value so when you're ready to sell it it's probably gonna be worth at least as much as you paid for it if not more if you buy something new from Target in five years it's gonna be out of style and it's not gonna be worth anything I love that I ended up doing my plant stand black to go with the front porch ties in perfectly things didn't get too cluttered and I'm super happy with how that turned out last year my husband and I built the trellises for my Jasmine to grow up and it's been so great this summer to see it finally filling in and the flowers just happened to bloom last week just in time for this video my olive tree was a gift for my sweet from Michelle and there's nothing that I love to give more as a gift or to get than plants because as you watch them grow every time I look at it I just think of her so love you Michelle I was a little bit nervous to paint the front steps white I really liked that old chippy paint that was already on there because it reminded me so much of the old world look in Italy once I painted the fresh coat of white on there I was really glad that I did it and I can't believe what a difference it made all of the furniture pieces all of the plant stands all of the pots have been thrifted and that helps so much with the bottom line we only ended up spending a few hundred dollars on everything here sometimes doing that yourself really pays off my husband actually picked up these chairs at a garage sale last summer for $10 a piece and I was out picking with Selena and he sent me a text was like want these yes they're perfect they're exactly what I wanted for the front porch my favorite terracotta pot is this giant one and this was a $5 score off a Facebook marketplace it's the perfect pot for my giant olive tree and this would have cost probably $150 if this was brand new this project has been so much fun and I'm so happy with how everything turned out the only thing that I would change if I was to do it over again is I would take the time and the money to rent a paint sprayer for the deck I spent three full entire days hand painting in every little nook and cranny to get this finished to look good thank you so much for joining me today let me know in the comments below what you think of my front porch transformation and I'll see you guys in the next episode we have two projects left that we didn't get done in time for this episode but we are going to refinish by sanding down this original 1911 for door and restore it back to all of its beauty and our antique letterbox just arrived so we're gonna get that installed here soon so I'll have to give you guys an update as soon as we've got those final two pieces done I just came to my front porch to film the last final clips and how funny is this friends of trees who helped us plant our trees in the front yard put a little note on the thing on the door and it says super cute front porch I did it you guys it's cute