Holiday House Back Porch Refresh

You might remember last summer when we gave the holiday house front porch a makeover. This year, we gave the back porch a little tender love and care too. I really debated if I should call this a “refresh” or a “makeover” as it kind of straddles the line, I suppose. I really loved this porch already—she didn’t need all that much to really shine. And I love getting to show you a peek at the backyard of this house because it’s probably a little bit bigger than you might guess when you see the house and the neighborhood.

This is such a sweet little porch to eat a meal outside or have an evening glass of wine or morning coffee. At night, once the lights are on, it gets even cuter. 🙂

Here is a before and after. As you can see, we didn’t change all that much. At least, there really aren’t any structural changes. We did add some posts so the lights could hang higher, but other than that we mostly worked with what we already had.

I can pretty much summarize our back porch refresh project in four steps:

1. Power wash the entire deck—which is always SO satisfying!

2. Stain the deck as well as new posts. We used this to stain the porch white, and did two coats. It’s great if you can test a small spot before starting to make sure you will love the outcome of a stain you’ve never used before.

3. Hang the lights. We used two sets of these outdoor lights which plug into an outdoor outlet that was already by the door.

4. Furnish the space. We kept things very simple and aimed for items that we felt could last without much supervision (since it’s a bnb house) and can mostly be in the full sun as this deck doesn’t have much shade.

I have to give a little shout-out to our neighbor who refreshed her house paint last year—that adorable green house next door. I just love the color! Anyway, thanks for letting us share the holiday house back porch refresh. Here’s to the warm evenings spent under string lights! xo. Emma

Details: dining table, chairs, rocking chairs, rug, string lights