If there’s one thing we’ve learned about living here, it’s that we live a lot outside. In between every educational break in the house, kids are running there, making smurfs in our fire pit every week or so, we sit on the front porch and watch neighborhood dogs pass by, and often eat or hang out on the roof of the second floor (we even work on laptops Our own there on very nice days – as i am writing this post now). We can really feel like the house works hard for us thanks to the location / climate (the good weather definitely encourages us to be outside a lot), but also because there are so many great outdoor areas that we can enjoy (we had no idea how great a roof would be Upstairs, but boy, we appreciate his presence!) Another very lucky event is that a lot of these outdoor areas only needed one or two simple upgrades to go from “the things we used to walk” to “a place that is used every day”. Like this Covered Porch … I saw it last in this post about outdoor updates for our home (there’s also this newer outdoor post) – and it had remained pretty much unused for the past eight months until we realized it was the perfect place to hang the great hanging tent we got for the kids to spend Holidays. Since it’s straight out of our bedroom, our plan is to finally convert some of that covered porch into an ensuite – but since sharing the bathroom with the kids was less important than we expected, we really don’t have any urgency to start a major Renault like this. We prefer to work on adding a swimming pool and separate guest studio a little bit first (we have applied for the pool pass but it’s very slow). So creating a place where kids can relax, read books, color, and spend some cool time seems like an ideal “in the moment” of that covered porch. Especially since we have about 56 other trees that we can use to hang the tent after this covered porch is no longer available But first … the wooden floor has seen better days. It was painted the same white as the house by a contractor in April (our best guess is that he got a few drops on it and because he thought we’d be turning it into a bathroom soon, he said “Eh, paint everything white now”). But white decking isn’t the best for hiding leaf stains, dirt, and all the things that end up on your feet or your slipper, as you can see below: Thanks to our stair runner project, we had some indoor / outdoor porch and floor paint already on hand. And we thought a medium gray is the only thing that refreshes this area for free in an afternoon. I don’t have pictures of our prep work, but all we did was blow all the loose leaves and pine needles onto the deck, then tap wash it to clean as much as possible and let it dry completely. As you can see in this photo below, there was still a lot of discoloration and staining that didn’t burst … but luckily the balcony and floor paint covered it all. For paint details, we chose this porch and floor enamel that was recommended by a professional in the paint store for a stair runner project, the color is gray but nice warm (gray required from Sherwin-Williams – you can also see how he reads from the inside on our stairs here). Ta daaaaa. Much better. It’s funny how darker it looks on the bottom, but personally it definitely looks much darker than it did when the decor was the same white as the home. Hopefully the requested gray remains well established, but the beauty of this update is that it took an afternoon, so if it ends up smudging and we want to go darker with the color below the streak, we now know it’s the best easy to do. Really, this entire update took less than 3 hours (between setting up and painting and hanging the tent). This is the view from the side window in the kitchen. Our beloved green fence is the true MVP of our outdoor upgrades. More on that, the new fire pit area, and some landscaping we’ve added around the fence soon! Note: If you’ve been wondering about fence color, it’s Halcyon Green by Sherwin Williams, and you can hear more about building a fence here. As for the tent, this is the one we have, and it’s huge! It is 60 feet wide and has a capacity of 450 pounds, so it’s basically like a double swing where you can lie down in any direction (in fact, both kids pose in the photo below). The nice thing about this versus the double swing is that it’s more stable (this can’t be tilted very easily) – and it doesn’t roll toward the middle or anything – every child can get in place without feeling like they’re drifting into a crack in the middle. Our kids use it for hanging out, reading, coloring and making activity books, all you have to do is play some of the imaginative games it includes as ‘car’ or ‘house’. They even tried to play board games indoors and “sleep during the day” (did I mention that they like being in this hanging tent?). It’s a cute counterpart to the exposed tree swing (and it’s for the wild and crazy swing in the side yard – you can see that in this post). I also put on this hanging tent for the evening after s’mores. it is good. As for how we hung it, we used one of these straps (the other that comes in the kit is what we used to hang our exposed tree hammock). Everything looked nice and safe – and it was very easy to hang (the tree swing we hung over a branch this way was pretty simple). The hanging tent itself is a kind of semi-transparent thicker fabric (much stronger than sheer or even mesh curtain). It feels cocoonful on the inside, but it’s not like a dark hole. They can easily read things and see well inside, but they also feel like it’s their little world. Oh and it has a cup holder, which you can see in the photo below. This was John’s favorite part when he got up (he and I took him around to make sure he wouldn’t collapse, and he was totally amazed at the cup holder). So here’s the simple but very practical update received from this previously covered porch not used during the holidays. And yes our Christmas tree is still standing. Can you tell us we love the glow around the number of string lights outside throughout the year? I just found this before a photo taken from roughly the same angle from last February when we first laid our eyes on this house. Isn’t it crazy what too much paint (and ditching that old, shabby drawer) can do ?! If you want to read more about our home’s evolution over the past eight months, this archive is about our home in Florida – and covers every change, listing a chronological order for anyone wanting to dive deeper. And if you’re interested in learning how downsizing has met and exceeded our expectations (along with some of the biggest challenges we’ve encountered along the way), this post has all of those details. * Note: This post contains affiliate links * More posts from Young House Love
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