Pinterest Inspired Front Porch Projects--Part 1

Okay, so here's a true confession for you--we've lived in our home for 6 years and have not added one iota of curb appeal.  Zilch.  Nada.  Nothing.  We'd planned to, but we have a lot of kids and I've spent a lot of that 6 years pregnant or taking care of a little one and it just wasn't a priority.  We haven't even parked in the carport in several years because you couldn't fully open the doors of even our smallest vehicle, which is a huge pain when you are trying to put kids in carseats.  It should have been way up there on the ol' "To Do" list because EVERYONE that comes to our house uses the front door, including us.

Last year, Barry and I decided that this was our forever home.  This means that projects that we would have put off in a starter home have to be tackled to make this the home we want to still be in when our grandkids visit (which will be many, many, many moons from now).  So my "you know what I'd love to do to the house" has turned into "we must do this to the house."  We've made lists and have them on a phase plan.  We've been in Phase One of Curb Appeal for a couple of weeks now, mostly because we can only work on things when Barry is off work.  I've always wanted a bench in front of our living room window but never got around to actually purchasing one.  Months ago on Pinterest, I pinned these little gems that repurposes a headboard to make a bench. You can see them here and here.  I'm sure there are a ton of others on the net as well.

Like most things on Pinterest, I pinned them and forgot about it.  Yeah, that's how I roll.  But several days ago, I was browsing through my "Making a House Into a Home" board and found them again.  Hootie Hoo!
Did anyone else love Carla on "Top Chef"?  She's so cute!  Love her on "The Chew" too!
Digressing...
I just so happened to have a headboard lying around the house.  No joke.  It belonged to my grandfather who passed several years ago.  I waffled back and forth about using it, but it's really not doing us any favors by sitting in our shed collecting dust.  This way I can get some use out of it and I think he'd like that.  Barry and I challenged ourselves to repurpose everything we could and spend less than $20 on the bench. 
I'm not going to go into how we did it with pics and whatnot because these ladies cover it pretty well, but we basically built a rectangle the length and depth we wanted the seat to be out of 2 x 4s and added a few braces in the middle for extra support.  Then we attached it to the headboard and covered the 2 x 4 base with 1 x10s.  The headboard legs act as the back legs so we only needed to purchase two front legs and two top plates for the front legs to screw into.  And here she is!

I'm not crazy about the legs but there was a very limited selection at our Home Depot, so I'll get different legs at some point and re-purpose these for another project that I'm planning.  We came in at around $17 for the bench.  And please excuse the mess of boards on the right side of the shot--cleaning up the mess from all of this is next on the list.  :-)
You may also notice the flower pots on the left side of the shot.  You can read more about those in Part 2.

Peace and Love, Jen