Before and After

I love love LOVE the thisyounghouse blog and they posted yesterday about a before and after contest that you did yourself, with very little outside help. I love contests and think that hubs and I do good work to our houses, so I entered. I submitted the porch that we did last summer at the old house.

This is the before:

The previous owner to our house used the screened in porch as a dog kennel, and storage for trash. (that photo is from the day we closed on the house - exactly as the previous owner left it...) The floor was like jello, bending and bouncing back as you walked across, and if you jumped the entire structure would jiggle. So my husband and my father ripped up the stained indoor/outdoor carpet and tore apart the floorboards. They left the screens and the four corners in tact, and solidified the foundation of the porch with cement and a lot of lumber. We used pre-treated outdoor lumber and stained it to give it a nice finish. We also hung the lamps to give the area a nice glow at night (that green ball at the top of the photo). And those cute little candles on the table are actually baby citronella candles :)



Do you think we'll win?