Low Budget Back Porch Makeover

When we purchased our little house a few years ago, one of our favorite features was the large, screened in back porch. It needed some work, but we envisioned using it as a second living area, or a playroom, either of which would be a plus, in our small home.

Baby V was born several months after we closed on the house, and along with a lot of other projects, this one was put on the back burner. Indefinitely.

Last year, we bought a nice little set of patio furniture from Ikea, but that's about all we've done. The porch has otherwise become a depository for things we don't have room for elsewhere. (By the way, the dog's eyes aren't normally that creepy looking. Just in case you were wondering.)




We've decided to start working on it again. On as close to a zero budget as possible.


Our first task was to basically just clean up. We got rid of some junk, relocated other stuff to the garage, and rearranged what was left.


After that, we hung up these cool curtain tracks that we picked up from Ikea last year. I purchased a whole bolt of burlap to make curtains, although that still ended up not being quite enough, so I'm waiting on Hobby Lobby to restock, in order to finish a couple of projects.






I sewed some pillows for the furniture out of some pretty old fabric I had lying around, and then tie dyed a tablecloth I already had, as well as some muslin fabric, which I them used to make a couple of more pillows.







Finally, I added the previously blogged about do-dads wrapped in jute, and a

couple of ferns.

We spent:

$25 for the burlap

$5 for one fern (The other came from the front porch.)

$18 for fiberfill stuffing for the pillows

From the craft stash and/or repurposed from elsewhere in the house:

Curtain hardware, patterned fabric, muslin, fabric dye, jute, jars & canister, tablecloth, tealights

It's not totally finished yet. I still have several other things in mind to do, and we are still trying to come up with a nice, but cheap flooring option. The floor is currently just icky old concrete that's impossible to keep clean.

Not bad for a $48 makeover, huh?

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