Welcome to my summer back porch tour! I thought we’d take a break today from cooking and sharing recipes and take a little tour of one of my favorite places in our house…our back porch!
Summer Back Porch
One of my favorite places to sit and relax is out on the back porch. And it took me almost 10 years to finally enjoy it all because of the way the furniture was placed. That’s a little crazy, right? Come enjoy a little tour of our summer back porch here at Walking on Sunshine.
When we built our house 15 years ago we didn’t have the back porch. Well, to be honest with you, our back porch started out as a deck. The builder wanted to put a 10 by 12 foot deck on the back of our house. Truthfully, that’s exactly what we thought we wanted.
Until one day my hubby and I came out to the property to look over things and brought a tape measure along with us. We measured out exactly how big a 10 by 12 foot deck is and we knew it would NOT be big enough. We contacted the builder and put the deck on hold…for almost 3 years!
Planning our Summer Back Porch
To begin with, we didn’t plan to build a back porch. We really only wanted a nice size deck. My husband built the deck after we were in our new house for about 4 years. We loved the size of our back deck, only the sun made it way too hot to even sit out on there to enjoy anything.
Subsequently we tried a few different things to help with the sun. We purchased an umbrella to put in our table, but that only gave shade to the table while you were eating. AND…have I told you that where we live it’s incredibly windy?
The wind knocked that umbrella over on more than one occasion. In fact, the wind blew the table and chairs off the deck too.
Adding a Roof to the Summer Back Porch
We decided for our 20th anniversary to “gift” each other a roof over the beautiful deck my husband built so we could finally sit outside without needing sunscreen. We hired a contractor and he turned our beautiful deck into our beautiful back porch.
How to Place Furniture on the Summer Back Porch
We first placed the couch and two chairs in a corner that had you facing the back of the house when you sat in them. I never sat in the couch and found the “view” to be a little boring. Two years ago we rearranged the furniture and placed the couch in this area by the back wall of the house.
You can now sit down on the couch and enjoy the beautiful view of our back yard! I love sitting here! My husband and I sit here almost every morning during the summer and have our morning devotions together before he leaves for work.
The first set of doors by the couch lead into our kitchen. The second set of doors lead into our dining room. We wanted to have a nice flow onto the back porch when entertaining. As you can see from the photos, we have created a great flow to the back porch that works perfectly!
Access to the Vegetable Garden
You can see our vegetable garden from this corner of the back porch. Behind this little ladder with the flower sits our rain barrel that’s missing from the photo. We had to purchase a new one that hasn’t arrived yet. Our other one cracked over the winter due to the unusually cold temperatures we had here in our corner of the world.
I absolutely LOVE using our rain barrel to water all the flower pots. I even use it to water some of the vegetables growing in the garden. We have a hose that we can attach to the bottom of the rain barrel that helps.
Another thing I love about our rain barrel is being able to use the rain water to rinse off the veggies from the garden as we harvest them. The rain barrel was a great investment.
This is the first year I planted sweet potato vine in a few of the planters on our back porch. They are doing amazing!
Do you see a few “fake birds” in the planters? We have a slight problem with birds wanting to build nests and the fake birds do help to keep the real birds away. The real birds make a huge mess all over the back porch as well.
How to Add a Porch Swing
We have a porch swing in this corner that originally had a metal frame, but the wind blew the swing over way too many times. My hubby built this sturdy wood frame that withstands the wind in our area.
Even when Hurricane Sandy came a few years ago and did a little damage to the roof of our house, this porch swing didn’t move!
We also have two sets of stairs. One leading up from the entrance off our driveway and the other leads down to the full back yard and vegetable garden. With such a large back porch, two sets of stairs are perfect.
Our Summer Back Porch at Night
One of the things we love most about our home is the incredible views. Here’s a photo of my view as the sun was just starting to go down one night.
I love these solar fairy lights that I have placed inside one of my mason jars. They really do work great and add just the right touch at night. I have a few mason jars with fairy lights placed around the back porch for just the right touch of ambiance.
As you can see, our view from the back porch as the sun sets is pretty amazing, right?
As a result of simply moving the couch to a different location on the back porch, this is what we see now! The sky puts on a beautiful show for us most nights!
I hope you enjoyed my summer back porch tour as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you.
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Lovely, Lois! And your view is just stunning as well.
Thank you Sue!
Oh Forget this, I’d never go back to work.
It’s very inviting. I’d be spending many hours out there. Right now I’m still working on my deck. Since I live on the 2nd floor of my apartment building, putting a roof over it really isn’t an option. I currently have an umbrella, although I would like something larger. I’m thinking that next year I may get one of those retractable awnings, and also get some patio doors installed. I love to take advantage of every warm day there is. After all, this is Maine!
We thought of getting a retractable awning as well, but with the amount of wind we get here we didn’t think it would last more than a few years. So happy we went with the porch roof. Thanks for visiting!