A Southern Blue Porch Ceiling...

Consider this sort of a "part 1" to our screened-in porch "freshening-up".  :)

When we first looked at this house one year ago, this brand new back porch was definitely one of our favorite features.

I cannot WAIT until everything greens up again and the trees fill in like that soon!

That shot was taken shortly after we moved in last Spring. We used all of the same patio furniture from our last house (from Target- It's held up SUPER well for 4 years), and a glass table that my parents gave to us that they didn't need.  We used all of the same cushions (more on that in a moment), little lanterns, etc.  The porch has pretty much looked exactly like that since the day we moved in.

Waylon loves it too...

See what I mean about the trees?? Not so pretty in the winter... :/

One of my favorite parts about it is the pretty bead board ceiling. I had always dreamed of painting it a pretty "haint" blue (very common on older historic homes in the south).  

To get an idea, check out these photos here, here, and here. ...and if you want more, Pinterest has got you covered.

There's a whole southern backstory to the whole "haint blue ceiling" thing, and it mostly involves warding off evil spirits and mosquitos. Basically those two are one and the same in the south. If you've ever lived through a Georgia summer, you know what I mean. ;)

I'm not at all superstitious, and I'm not sure I buy the whole thing about it keeping bugs away, but I'm just pretty much in love with the way they look. 

And so our porch ceiling went blue.

Let me just tell you, it is not easy to capture the color of this bad boy on camera. It's a lot brighter and clearer blue than these show.

I used "Atmospheric" by Sherwin Williams in a high gloss formula (which is also why it's a bit hard to capture the true color because it's so reflective and pretty).  In person, it matches closest to how this ceiling appears. I would guess that's the shade they used as well. My parents just recently painted their new porch ceiling this same shade and my mom said that this was the color most often used to paint blue porch ceilings with from the info that she had found.

It's bright and beautiful and mimics the color of the sky perfectly.

The actual painting was a bit difficult. I just hate painting ceilings, period. I actually used painter's tape for this one since we have pretty moulding around the actual ceiling. So I taped that off and covered everything (even most of the floor) with drop cloths.  I didn't do that so much for drips (because I'm used to painting with a roller), but because rollers inevitably leave tiny "splatter" marks on flooring that you may not even notice right away. Hundreds of them. So it's best to be safe!

Here is a shot from the other side. The natural-colored wicker furniture was left from the previous owners. Which worked out perfectly because it's a large space and it was nice not having to buy extra furniture to go with the stuff we already had...

...Which brings me to why I referred to the new ceiling as "part 1" to this redo.  The furniture is in awesome shape and is made quite nicely. However, they didn't have any cushions, so I added my pretty  outdoor pillows I already had and used some mismatched large cushions to sit on that I found at Homegoods and TJ Maxx. I may eventually change those, but I think they'll look much better when I repaint the furniture. Before the pollen starts to fall this year (or I may just wait until after so I can clean it really really well), I'm planning on spraying the natural-colored furniture the same dark color as the rest of the furniture out here. After I do that, they should match pretty darn closely and everything should look a bit fresher and more cohesive.

I've owned outdoor pillows from several places, but all of my black and white ones have held up beautifully.  For three years they baked in the sun on the back porch of our last house and they've held up nicely for one year here as well. They still look brand new with zero fading which is super impressive.

I've even used them indoors for years.  I had some extra lumbar pillows and one extra square pillow I had in the basement that I used in our family room at our old house years back. Not sure why I didn't put them back out in there after we moved. That was always my favorite look for our family room (the black and white), so I put them out again recently.  All of these outdoor pillows I've shown are from Ballard Designs.

I love the look of mixing different black and white patterns. I'll do a post on this space soon!

Anyway, I love how the striped pillows are soft to the touch (unlike most "outdoor" pillows), yet I know they're super durable enough to last forever. It also works better in here because the stripes aren't too bold or wide, and rather than being stark black and white, they're black and a sand color.

Overall, while this was tricky (SO glad we have no other ceilings that need to be painted...), I'm so glad I went ahead and did it.  I feel like it made our house just a bit more unique and special. 

I'll update you guys when I spruce up the furniture out there.  I also want to maybe pick up a few ferns as Spring draws closer.

So do any of you guys have blue porch ceilings? What do you think about them?