A few weeks ago, I announced that Lowe’s was doing a fun “Bleak to Chic” campaign for 10 families who lived in cities that were hard hit by winter. Ten bloggers were chosen by Lowe’s to design and implement the makeovers with the help of Lowe’s volunteers. Each blogger was assigned to a different city around the U.S. and each of us was tasked with choosing one qualifying family from the pool of applicants for our area. It was so difficult to choose just one! After carefully reviewing each application (keeping in mind what I thought could realistically be accomplished in a two-day period of time), I settled on a family requesting an outdoor porch and deck makeover.
In their application, the families were asked to provide a wish-list for their proposed project. My chosen homeowner’s moved into their current home less than a year ago and wanted help with the following: refreshing outdoor furniture, changing out light fixtures, updating paint, creating an eat-in area on the porch, and designing a better floor plan for the deck. I knew immediately that I would be able to rock the socks off this space!
Here are some pictures of their porch and deck before. It had so much potential and just needed a little TLC.
The Design Process
The first thing I asked the family to do was create a Pinterest board–pinning pictures of Lowe’s products as well as inspiration pics of outdoor spaces that caught their eye. This gave me immediate insight into the family’s decorating style, product choices, and potential color schemes.
Tip: Anytime you are beginning a room makeover, create an inspiration board to help you hone in on what you hope the space will look and feel like. Look for themes within your pins to see what you gravitate towards.
From the pin board, I could see that Laura & Mike enjoyed seagrass furniture, bright colored accessories, graphic patterns, and warm wood furnishings. My next step was to take that information and provide two color palette options using all products sourced from Lowe’s. These boards were simply to show some color and product options and not to be taken as finished products.
Laura & Mike immediately knew that they preferred the blue and green color scheme over the black, tan, and red. My next step was to get together with my friend Kathleen who agreed to help me with the makeover and do some space planning, product selection, and floor planning based on all of the information we had collected.
Tip: Once you have decided upon a color scheme, measure all floor space before choosing products. This will help you pick furnishings appropriately sized for your space.”
I presented the family with a design board of the space and an outdoor floor plan. We jumped on a call to talk through the entire plan and made changes as needed. All of the furniture pictured on the left of the board was chosen for the screen porch and the furniture on the right of the board was for the deck.
Things got interesting when I submitted my product order and found out that over half of our selected products were backordered, or out of stock. Uh oh. This happens a lot to me when I design, and I just take it as a challenge to get creative! Fortunately, Lowe’s has a lot of wonderful offerings and I regrouped with a new product list. For products that couldn’t be purchased, Kathleen and I made, painted, and DIY’ed items to fit my design plan. I’m absolutely thrilled with how everything turned out and will hopefully have the go-ahead from Lowe’s to share the final reveal with you soon! The porch and deck turned out exactly as pictured in my mind’s eye and the family was THRILLED with their outdoor space! Stay tuned for the full reveal…
Amazing build! Hope you spent lots of time in that beautiful place 🙂