Over a year and a half ago we bought two of these planters from CB2…

We actually got them for the patio of our first place (a cozy two bedroom apartment on the other side of town). Back then, silver was our go-to metallic accent color. It matched everything we had, and it went really well with the exterior of our apartment complex. Around the time they came in, we were in the middle of the maybe-we-should-buy-a-house stage. In light of that, we decided to put the patio beautification on hold and store the planters in my parents’ garage. Fast forward a year and a half… The house had been bought, renovations were underway, and we were moving into our new (to us) house. While we were going through the “stuff” we had stored in my parents garage, we stumbled upon our unused planters – STILL in the box! We had totally forgotten about them. To make things even sweeter, we’d been looking to buy planters for the carport! Score!

Btw, it was SUPER hot outside. So the grass looked dead.

Since moving into the house, we’ve turned a page in the accent color book. While silver is a great color that we still use it from time to time, we especially like the way oil-rubbed bronze interacts with our dark floors and bright white trim. All of our door hardware (more about that here) are now oil-rubbed bronze, so it’s only natural that our planters be that color too – especially since they will be going beside the two back doors which were painted a black/brown. For our hue of choice, we went with Rustoleum’s Oil Rubbed Bronze Metallic Spray Paint. That stuff… is awesome. Great color, coverage and the whole nine yards. I wish we could find about a billion other things to use it on!

Obviously, painting plain planters (try saying that 10 times fast!) isn’t rocket science, so I’m not going to get into much detail there. You know the drill… keep the can about 10 inches from the surface, spray in steady back-in-forth motion, slightly overlap each stroke, yada, yada, yada. Just remember, you’re better off doing lots of light coats than a few heavy ones. It gives you better coverage and a streak-free final product. Oh, and we ended up using almost exactly two cans to do both planters.

Now that we had these spiffy “new” planters, we needed to fill them. When picking out flowers, we kept in mind they would be under the carport, so the plants we chose needed to be extremely shade-tolerant. We also wanted to get something self-contained that wouldn’t have to be transferred to a new container. Why? We wanted less fuss. Plain and simple. We’re definitely going to be getting our gardening on in the near future, but buying something that was already in a permanent home just made us feel more comfortable. Taking all of that into consideration, we settled on these beauties…

These are Impatiens. We picked them up at Lowe’s for $8.99 a pop. They haven’t fully bloomed yet, but if they end up looking anything like the tag, we’re stoked. The tag says they will bloom from spring through fall, they are fast growing (funny since they are Impatiens), and they are good to go in the shade. If you have brown thumbs (okay, enough with the puns… we are the Browns… brown thumbs. I know that’s got to be annoying but I couldn’t resist.) like ourselves, be sure to read the tag. The back of the tag is full of info about transplanting, water usage, pruning, fertilizing and such.

The flower pots are pretty shallow so we put some bricks we havd left over from a previous project in the bottom and set them on top. This puts the flowers just above the lip of the planters and keeps the planters from moving around as well!

After a little snip of the hangers and a drink of water, the flowers were all set in their new home…

The plants ended up being the perfect size for these planters. They aren’t too crowded so they have enough room to grow…

Yay for the long lost planters! Now we’re one step closer to completing Operation Carport Prettification. It’s a small step, but it’s a step nonetheless. We’re going to keep our fingers crossed that we have a bright and sunny weekend so we can move on to our other outdoor projects!

The carport is where we go in and out everyday. Since we have ample driveway space behind the house for parking cars, we rarely park the car in there simply because it makes things feel more open and gives us a sense of an “outdoor entry” – even though it’s far from inviting or remotely pretty…

Our “way-down-the-road plan” is to finish the carport and make it a bonus room. Until then, we want to make it as welcoming and inviting as possible without pouring a ton of money into it. In order to get started on the right track, we picked out three major improvements that will make a big impact without breaking the bank:

1. OVERHEAD. Just about everything in the carport could use some sort of facelift, but the ceiling especially needs some work. The paint, which was once white (probably back in the 70′s!) is now a sickly-looking yellow, dirty, and peeling like crazy. Then there’s the lighting – which clearly speaks for itself:

We’ve known since we bought the house that something needed to be done to the ceiling, but we knew scraping, sanding, and re-painting the ceiling was going to be a ton of work. Even though we felt like we were up for the task, a smooth, solid colored ceiling wouldn’t be that interesting and definitely wouldn’t bring any “warmth” to the space. Inspiration struck when we saw an episode of Sarah’s House on HGTV. Instead of repairing the existing carport ceiling, Sarah had it covered with raw wood paneling and painted it the same color as the trim. Genius! I couldn’t find a close-up photo of this project (I did find the whole episode online! Check it out here.) but here’s an inspiring before and after:

This idea (or a version of it) with the addition of two new light fixtures will (hopefully) totally transform the now cold and dingy carport into an inviting “outdoor entry”. As for the light fixtures, we’re thinking of replacing them with two hanging lantern lights – maybe something like one of these…

2. THE FLOOR. Oh, the floor. We sweep it regularly but after years of cars sitting on it, it’s very badly stained and cracked. Therefore, we feel the best way to solve this problem is to start from scratch. No, we’re not going to try to rip the whole thing out. We’re planning on repairing the cracks and coating the carport floor with a textured epoxy. I kinda sorta spilled a mixture of ultra dark wood stain on the floor during another small project that is currently in progress (more on that later). Yet another reason to “start from scratch”.

The epoxy will protect the floor from spills and make cleaning a lot easier. This will probably be our biggest “DIY” project to date (at least in our heads anyway), but we’re pretty sure we can do it. I guess we’ll find out soon enough! Not as soon as we would like though. While we would love to get this done over the upcoming 3-day weekend, we read that it’s best to do this when it’s under 90 degrees. Sadly, this weekend, the forecast is a rather toasty 93 degrees plus.

3. FINISHING TOUCHES. This step consists of a lot of little things, including power washing the steps and walls, bringing in a planter or two, re-painting the railings, and possibly adding doormats.

That pretty much sums up what we’ve got planned for the carport – aka: “outdoor entry” and a majority of what we’ll be up to this weekend. Do you have any outdoor projects lined up for this holiday weekend? Clue us in by leaving a comment…

Sarah’s House inspiration photos found here. Lighting inspiration from Shades of Light. Flower planter image found here.