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Cottage Style Back Porch Design Plan

It’s about to be my favorite time of year here in south Alabama. For the rest of the world, Summer time means backyard barbecue’s, outdoor fun and lots of family memories. For those of us who live in the dead of the humidity, we tend to hibernate inside during the summer and come out during the fall. That being said, this is the best time of year to finally complete our outdoor back porch makeover. First, I want to share my cottage style back porch design plan.

My goal with creating this outdoor cottage style back porch design plan is making a comfortable yet spacious place for my family to enjoy.

My hope is that this will be another living space for our home (at least during the fall months).

Let me show you what it looked like when we moved in.

Welcome to our Rustic Beach Cottage backyard right after we purchased our home. It’s a bit of a mess. 🙂

You can see the porch is very small.

We’ve already completed a handful of DIY’s and outdoor design ideas and it’s almost time for the fun part; decorating the cottage style back porch!

To-Do’s to complete for our cottage style backyard makeover:

  • Remove chain link fence
  • Remove extra bushes
  • Remove old pavers
  • Cover up grinder well
  • Cover up the grinder pump well light with an outdoor screen
  • Level the yard
  • Fix the well pump and add sprinkler system
  • Sod most of backyard
  • Extend the back porch
  • Paint the porch ceiling white
  • Seal the wood floor
  • Decorate!

The first thing on the list was to remove the chain link fence. Hubby thought I was crazy when I told him that I listed it for FREE on Facebook Marketplace.

Let me tell you friends, this was a huge success. Not only did we NOT have to do any work, but it was gone within days. If you’ve ever removed cemented fence posts, you know what a relief this was to NOT have to do it.

People will do anything to get something free, even manual labor. Fence materials are expensive too, so I was doing someone a favor just like they were doing us a favor by getting rid of it!

Just a little something to remember next time you want something gone from your house. If it has value, I’m sure someone needs it and will gladly come get it off your hands!

Below is what the yard looked like a few months after the fence was gone. Don’t you think the yard looks 8 times bigger?

Next hubby borrowed a friends front loader and leveled the yard out so the ground was more even. It had a big dip right behind the old chain fence.

Next I completed one of the DIY’s on my list; covering up the old grinder pump well.

Extending our back porch was next on the list. We doubled the size of the deck and extended it to the end of our home.

This was labor intensive!

Whew glad that’s done! (I can’t take all the credit, hubby did a lot of it LOL).

Here is the extended porch (without the roof).

Just a disclaimer, I’m not buying new furniture for this. I’m trying to use as much of our existing outdoor furniture as I can.

I’ve shared a ton of tips on how to paint and maintain outdoor furniture to last.

I just couldn’t justify buying anything new when we had perfectly good outdoor furniture. All it needed was a little clean up and paint and now they look almost new.

That being said, I did purchase a few new accessories. I’ll share those below.

The first thing I did was give an old porch swing a good makeover.

How to Hang a Porch Swing with a Swing Makeover

It’s amazing what a little paint and rope can do right?

Just a few more things to complete;

  • Add a metal roof to the extension
  • Paint the entire ceiling white
  • Seal the deck floor

Only a few more steps until we can call this porch makeover done!

Cottage style porch mood board

cottage style back porch

I won’t be buying a whole lot new other than accessories. We currently already have the dining set, the porch swing and the rockers.

Disclosure; this post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This does not affect the price you pay. This disclosure statement refers to the rest of the Amazon links in this post.

I’ve shared a source list below for your convenience.

SHOP THE POST:

Meridian Buffalo Check blue and white rug

outdoor area rug

Porch Swing (not the same, but similar)

Wicker Rockers (not the same, but similar)

Wicker Bar Table Set (not the same, but similar)

Hanging Boston Fern

I can’t wait to show y’all the finished product! Here is the final reveal of the Cottage Style Porch makeover.

Cottage Style Porch Makeover
cottage style back porch makeover

See more detail in the reveal blog post!

Also since this was written I added a lovely DIY wood outdoor privacy screen. This was so easy and it feels like a whole separate space now!

DIY wood privacy wall for porch

Lindsey**

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  1. brenda says:

    will be pleased to see the final picture