Progressively Challenged

I love the new front porch ceiling so much I can barely see the other things that still needs to be done to bring it up to scratch. Maybe you’re confused by my revelling when other things out there still looks like this.

And this.

And this.

But you see, in my HEAD it looks entirely different. Like the front porch ceiling, it actually looked like this in my head before we even had it torn down and rebuilt. And honestly, it rarely does end up looking like what I see in my head. I have all these ideas but I’m not always sure how to get to that point, and more often than not I don’t manage to pinpoint the exact thing that gives me the feeling or look that I’m going for, and I fall short. And have a tantrum.

So the ceiling coming out exactly like I had envisioned was quite the moment for me.

Nevertheless. I still have a vision for almost every space in our house (haven’t shared much of that) and what I see for the front porch is this.

• white ceiling (the primer on the new boards is light blue if you can believe it, doesn’t look half bad actually)
• pillars and horizontal beam sanded down and painted white (they’re creamy now)
• new wall lights
• paint house white (still considering rendering but probably in the too-hard-basket)
• black front door
• big green plants, hanging and standing
• probably a tiled floor (dirty spot-stained concrete now)
• cozy wine drinking tea sipping sitting area

And if I could get all of that to feel inviting and tropical, I’d be one happy little wine drinking camper.

For the quite long ToDo list for the porch you can re-visit this ol’ post.

This is where we left off last Thursday.

And this is today.

Front porch ceiling is all built. There is the paint prep left and the actual painting to be done, but for now the ceiling is primed and can handle weather for a while so we’re not exactly going to jump to it considering the guest room (breathe… breathe…) is still awaiting attention in preparation for its guest in … 3.5 weeks!

Is good.

You guys!

I can’t… I can barely talk about it. This new ceiling just looks SOOO good! If I loved the front porch before, I’m practically ready to marry it now (sorry Banker, you’re now number two).

And as you can see all the frilly bits have also been removed.

The builders ran out of board so they weren’t able to quite finish outside my study, they’re three boards short. They reckon it’s about a 20 minute job to finish. Must be so annoying for them because they now have to go shopping again and then come all the way back here to complete it. For three lousy boards and 20 minutes of work. Annoying for them to be so close but not quite there. Almost almost there.

Now the beading needs gap filler where it meets the brick, nail holes need filling and sanding, and then the whole shebang will be painted. Builders offered to paint but the offer came with a price tag to match so … Banker, if you’re reading this, if you spackle and sand the nail holes, I’ll gap-fill beading and then paint! And that is my only and final offer! (Sucker!)

I feel so emotional right now. Like when you have a big vision, and reality for once beats it by a mile.

Would it be weird if I go pet the ceiling?

Don’t answer that.

One major thing that sold the house to us was the front porch. It could do with a few tweaks but we loved it nonetheless.

One of the tweaks was to remove the lattice.

There are ten lattices on the front porch. Each lattice has four screws. The lattice and screws have been painted over many times, MANY times, to the point where the screws are barely visible anymore. That makes 40 paint-drowned screws.

Gasp!

Every pair of lattice also have a bottom trim that also needed to be removed.

So. Plan A to remove the screws and frill (sorry, lattice) was to just scrape paint until I can find the screw then unscrew it.

40 times.

That had me so exhausted just thinking about it I immediately scratched that plan for Plan B: beg and plead a tradie to do it for me. And whaddya know, the builder boys that were here today building the porch ceiling offered to do it for me!

I totally played it cool.

Just kidding, I jumped on it like a spider monkey. I was ALL OVER that.

They removed the lattice in passing sort of. While doing other things. See, that’s the difference between pros and frustrated DIYers. It would’ve taken me WEEKS, true story I’m afraid.

Aaah, that’s it. So much better. Frill free.

There are also eight lattices on the carport. Like a mile up in the air. Entirely unreachable. I was never even going to touch them. Like EVER. I was thinking they’ll come down once I get to tear the entire carport down and build a garage, in a hundred years. But the builders said they’d do them too for a consistent look! Do I have the best builders or what?!

Rhetorical question. Because I do. And you can’t have them. Can’t touch this, daa da da da, dada, dada, can’t touch this.

Builders have done a great job today.