Front Porch - Before and After

Okay, confession time! 

Since I have moved into my farmhouse, I have virtually ignored my front porch. And, even worse, slowly but surely a bunch of stuff that needed to be thrown away collected. A used cat dish--okay dishes. A broken ceramic bird. The box my hammock stand arrived in. An empty plant hanger. A window box I never installed.

The only person who ever really sees my front porch is my mail lady and my Amish neighbor when there's an emergency and needs a phone call made on his behalf. 

So, I was standing on my front porch with my writing friend Anna, talking about how I had no real plan for it yet. If you're into Myer Briggs, Anna is an INFP and more conscious to the tiniest vibes of the universe and less concerned about the concrete details of time and space. But she's delightfully surprising! One of the jokes in my friend groups is that the two of us  (INFJ and INFP) went car shopping together--a very unlikely duo for car shopping. We confused how much she'd paid a month in car insurance vs their car payment. We spent about eight hours arguing with the dealership that I would pay no more monthly than she and her husband paid for their new car. Only we were wrong about how much she was actually paying. The dealership, however, came within $70 of her monthly insurance payments. So in the end, we did really well together.  

Once again, Anna, who rarely notices space and dimensions, surprised me. She listened to my front porch woes, squinted at it, then said, "All you really want is a bench and a swing. It would be enough for you to walk through, but enough to sit out here and enjoy it."

(As they would say in Despicable Me:) Light bulb!

She was so right! That was the perfect solution.  I knew immediately that I wanted a pew. I've always wanted a pew. So, the search began. 

Then The Complete Book of Clean step number 27 was "Make a Grand Entrance." 

Those two things combined in the same week, and I decided to make my front porch my focus. 

As you probably know, it's one thing to decide you're going to buy a pew and quite another to find one. After countless hours of combing Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, I finally found a pew I liked for a price I would pay. Another writer friend Gina Holmes commented, "That's the great thing about being older, you know what you want and don't waste your money anymore on things you end up not wanting later." 

That decided me to take the financial plunge and just do it. She was right. It was exactly what I wanted--what I'd always wanted. 

I'm so pleased with the result. Here is the semi before:

 (Semi because I'd already lined up my chairs to test out the bench idea, threw away the bric-a-brac, and brought the mudroom pillows outside):

Here is the semi after: 

(Semi- because the blue chairs are holding the place for the future porch swing)

This morning I had coffee with my daughter on the front porch--Amazing!