Outdoor Space Renovation : Siding, Screens, and Sofa

Okay, my blessed husband and I have been working our tuckuses off getting this space put together! We have made great strides and the hardest part is done...the screens!

Let me remind you what the porch looked like before...

Take note of the ripped screens courtesy of Mr. Woodpecker:)

Here are pics of my very own "Ty Pennington"...
Some screens were easier than others! All in all, re-screening was challenging but definitely doable. Now that we have done it ourselves, I don't think that I would pay someone to do this in the future. It was fairly easy, but definitely a two person job and very time consuming. It took us 4 hours straight of both of us working to complete the project. One of us had to hold the the screen taught while the other person stapled the screen in place. We then had to nail finishing strips in place to frame the screens.


It is coming along nicely, but something that has been bothering me about this space is this wall of vinyl siding. This is what you are facing when sitting on my lovely "new to me" outdoor sofa. The wall looks like this...Totally uninspiring. It just bothers my eye immensely! So I decided to do a white wash on the siding to give it a very Cottage-like appearance. This was my inspiration photo...
And this is the result...I really like the way it turned out. It was pretty simple to complete. I simply watered down white outdoor paint until the consistency was like this...



And then I just painted over the whole area making sure that everything was covered. Now this is vinyl siding which has no depth whatsoever versus the real wood in the inspiration photo which has lots of depth. So I had to build in the depth with additional layers of paint. How? I'll tell you...after letting the first layer of white wash dry, I dipped a tiny bit of my brush in the full strength paint. I then brushed the paint over the area in an erratic manner. I repeated this step until I achieved the desired look.

So now for my Craigslist outdoor sofa reveal! And let me say, I have been looking for this exact piece for YEARS but could not justify paying full price for it. It is the Pottery Barn Seagrass sectional and I had given up all hope on ever finding it on the cheap. But I did...and like I've said before, I'm still riding the bargain shoppers high!
We still need accessories and some artwork...I have some Fab&Frugal ideas for those. But hey, we've come a long way baby!