Front {and back} Porch Sittin'

Happy Memorial Day Weekend y'all!  Do you have big plans? My Grandaddy is in town this weekend so we'll be visiting with him and then we plan on having some friends over on Sunday to help us break in the new house.

Speaking of, let's start talking about this house we're living in! We were fortunate enough to find a rental house in our favorite Nashville neighborhood - Sylvan Park. Both Branch and I have lived in this neighborhood before but since moving out of Nashville, it has only increased in popularity and rental houses are snatched off the market within days. We actually signed the lease on this house sight unseen after finding it on Craigslist (my mom came by to tour it) but we couldn't be more happy with it!

Our favorite thing about the house is all the outdoor space! We have a nice size front yard with a huge front porch and front porch swing! The front yard is fenced in with a picket fence and you enter through a little gate. We haven't made a ton of progress out there yet besides dropping some furniture into place but we did get two flags installed! I feel so patriotic! In the near future, I have plans to add hanging baskets of flowers, a hydrangea in the corner and two planters flanking the steps.

In the back we have an even larger patio in a large fenced back yard - the dogs are in heaven!

On one side of the patio, we created a seating area around a fire pit. Those adirondack chairs are from Home Depot and the grill was an early birthday present from Branch's parents. We've already fired it up a few times and have enjoyed some amazing meals!

A portion of the patio used to be covered but the owners have since removed the covering. Since the sun really beats down back there (especially in the afternoon and early evening) we decided to put up a sun shade on top of the existing frame and added some bistro lights.  We also added some curtains to block out the sun. Under the covered portion, we put together a little dining area.

Branch's parents gifted us with their old kitchen table set. When we originally picked it up from them it had a wood and white tile top and the chairs were white and birch.  The table had been sitting outside on their patio for a few weeks and water had gotten between the tile and the wood underneath. Unfortunately it didn't look like it was drying out between rains properly and the tabletop was showing signs of rot so we decided to DIY our first table top!

After searching around on Pinterest, we found this:

source

The inspiration blog used pallet wood but we decided to skip it and had some wood cut to size at the Home Depot instead.  A few hours spent on Sunday staining, spray painting, sanding and screwing wood into the frame and we were left with this:

We couldn't be more thrilled! Pinterest for the win! We plan to find two more chairs for the ends and spray paint them to match the rest of the set. For now we just plan to spend lots of nights grilling out and spending time under the lights!