Even with Monday’s holiday, we still saw some good progress on the porch last week!

For starters, the fireplace insert is in!  We went with a 42” box that’s wood burning with a gas starter.  It will be bricked up on the inside…fingers crossed that’ll happen this week.
Honey picked up the screen door we ordered from Home Depot (free site to store shipping.)  We knew we wanted a 36” vinyl door and just picked the one with the cleanest lines.  And would you believe it was also one of the cheapest options?  That never happens to me.
The stairs were extended to be the entire width between the house and chimney.  One (of many) things I love about contractor S is that he has such a great eye and extreme attention to detail.  He thought the way we originally had them left too much unusable space and when I took a peek I totally agreed.  Here’s the comparison:
‘ And they started on the screen that will cover the bowels of the deck.  I told S that I would rather not do lattice (which we had before) and he came up with this fantastic, clean and simple idea.  I just love it.  Again, I couldn’t have asked for a guy with better taste.  (Okay, okay.  That’s a bald-faced lie.  Bestie R beats out most any guy on the planet taste-wise.)  Of course, I will do some sort of small plantings and maybe some ground cover in front of this.

While the men have been hard at work outside, I’ve been sucking every last ounce of energy out of Mother to help with sewing all sorts of pillows and recovering four different chairs.  Here are the fabrics I settled on.  All are by Premier Prints in Village Blue.  I ordered from various sites and paid under $8 a yard for each.  The patterns are Chipper, Zig Zag and Towers.  (Speaking of Mother, she departed for Savannah yesterday after a two month stay here helping Sister out with her broken foot.  She’s already sorely missed!!!)

So that’s the news as far as the porch goes.  S uttered the words “paint next week” and I’m having a hard time containing my excitement!!!!