Back Porch Makeover

It is s'mores season at my house, and today I am sharing a backyard tour and giving you some quick ideas on how to spruce up your backyard for summer. We're actually going to spruce up my outdoor space by cleaning it up, and I'm going to share a few budget-friendly ideas on things that you can do to complete a back porch makeover at home. You don’t want to miss these back porch makeover before and afters, so let’s get to work.

This wicker furniture is at least ten years old. It came from Pier 1 a long time ago, and I'm just not ready to get rid of it, so we give it a coat of spray paint once a year.

I recently found this outdoor dining set from a model home, and I'm going to show you guys how I dress that up as well.

So here's a quick view of what the entire outdoor space looks like.

The first step in this summer's refresh was to move all of the furniture off the back porch because it really needed a refresh from top to bottom.

We like to make it a group effort at our house, and I would love to get the kids involved today. It really teaches them to have a sense of pride and home ownership and how to take care of their things.

I think my favorite part about our backyard is that we live on a nature preserve, and we get to experience all sorts of beautiful wildlife every single day. It really is a great experience for both us and the kids.

As you can see, we had our work cut out for us with the flooring. There were some cracks that needed to be sealed, and it was time for a really good pressure washing, so the guys got started with that and got everything all cleaned off.

Once everything was dry, I came through with a sealant for concrete cracks and made all of the necessary repairs.

Here is a quick shot of all the products I used to seal the cracks and to spray paint. I like Rust-Oleum for outdoor furniture, and the color I used was espresso. After that dried, we sealed it with a clear matte.

Once the sealant was feeling dry, it was time to paint the floor, so I used the Valspar Porch, Floor, and Patio paint in white.

And once the paint was dry, it was time to anchor the spaces with area rugs. My friends at PlushRugs sent me these rugs to share with you. This is an indoor outdoor rug.

A styling tip when using bold stripes is to run the stripes horizontally with the width of your space to give the illusion of more space, and I would normally recommend pulling the colors from inside of the home and to your exterior space, but I decided to live on the edge a little bit, at least for summer, and I loved it.

I chose this rug by Kas for the dining space because I love that the colors complement the exterior paint colors of the home.

So one more quick before look.

And here is the after.

I got this fire pit table a couple of years ago, and it is available on Amazon. It's definitely too warm to use during the day during the summertime in Florida, but we do use it during the evenings to make s'mores with the kids.

I styled the end tables with some gorgeous hurricanes and planter boxes.

This will be the first summer that we have this outdoor dining space usable with the furniture, so I'm excited to come out here and have breakfast on a Saturday morning.

I tried to do a tablescape that was kind of festive for Memorial Day weekend, and I have to tell you this cupcake ferris wheel from Pier 1 stole the show. And I'll be honest, I'm not even sure if that's what it's for, but when I saw it, I immediately thought cupcakes.

Look how cute this is. My kids have been having so much fun with it already.

Also from Pier 1 are these adorable melamine salad sleeves, which I got for 40% off.

To achieve this look, I started with the yellow and white striped placemats from Pottery Barn, followed by a red charger, followed by the navy blue and white dinner plates, which I found at HomeGoods, and then the salad plates.

Lastly, I added the yellow bowls on top for ice cream and dessert.

I thought these blue cups would be a nice touch too, and I also found those at Pier 1.

The Target Dollar Spot had these really cute straws.

The tabletop citronella torches I found at Walmart, and we obviously moved those when we sat down to eat.