Elsie’s Porch Tour

With all my heart, I LOVE THIS PORCH. It’s been life changing to have an outdoor space. Our kiddos love it, we love it, even our dogs love it! It’s far and away the space we love most in our new home!!! Today, I want to share a little tour with you now that we can finally call this porch “complete.” First of all, if you missed it, I already shared a post about how we painted the deck, redid the rails, etc.—you can see it here.

I have gotten a ton of questions about the chairs and loveseat, specifically how they hold up in rain and if we bring the cushions inside. So, first of all, it rains A LOT this time of year in Nashville … like is this Nashville or is this Seattle? It rains SO much. The first few years it really got to me. This year since we’re not driving as much—it’s actually kind of nice!

Anyway, we do not bring the cushions inside. They do great in the rain. When we first got them, I actually wanted them to get a LITTLE bit of wear so they didn’t look too perfect and intimidating, you know? Eventually when they get a stain or something (hasn’t happened yet), the covers are removable and I will take them off and wash them.

I personally would not buy outdoor furniture that needed to be brought in every night or every time it rains. It’s just not practical for our lifestyle and I think if we had to do that we’d use the furniture way less. I will, however, move it into storage during the winter. Not every home has a place that can store a ton of outdoor furniture, so if we didn’t have that option I would use covers in the winter.

We did a whole podcast episode about buying furniture for outdoor spaces.

Currently the only thing we keep covered is our fire table. 🙂

Sources: Lucara Sofa Set, Boden Bar Cart, Dining Table, Pink Dining Chairs, Sheepskin seat pads (we keep these indoors, they are not waterproof, but our kids love them for dinners outside). For the fire table, we went with this table (in the color natural and the 42″ size) and this propane tank cover (so that cute wood log is actually a ceramic coffee table that holds our propane tank in it). You will also need an extra 10-pound bag of lava rocks to cover the burner completely (it looked very bare before I added more). White pots (for largest plants) and I already had the rest of the pots. We also swapped the black lanterns out for these and these. *Article furniture was gifted (c/o).

OK so funny story. We rescheduled this shoot THREE times due to rain and about 10 minutes before we were starting to shoot this space … guess what, it started to rain! (I wasn’t joking that it rains a lot in Nashville) I was screaming to Jeremy to help us sweep up the leaves (hahaha, poor Jeremy) and we scrambled really fast, got the best photos we could, and then put the cover right back on the fire table because it was full on pouring. If you look at the photo above you can kind of see the rain drops. Hahahaha. Oh well. :))

Can you imagine that brick white? It will be SOON! I got a lot of questions about these plants. They are called “Bismarkia Palm” and they will have to come indoors with us during the winter (actually all the plants on this deck will and that’s the ONLY reason I didn’t get twice as many, haha). Isn’t she gorgeous??! These two plants make me happy every single day! Well, thank you for coming along for a tour! We’re so excited to use this deck to make s’mores with our little girls. :)) xx- Elsie