So, I’m popping in to give an update on the carport ceiling project. But, as it turns out, I have nada to report. If you live in the area, you know that we’ve been pummeled with rain for the last few days. Like, seriously, tons of rain. And tornadoes – which are definitely not on my “fun list”.

Because of the intense weather, our lumber guy wasn’t able to cut or deliver the wood this weekend like we’d hoped. Greg talked to him Sunday afternoon and he said as soon as the rain clears up, he’s cutting our lumber and getting it to us as soon as possible. That being the case, we’re keeping our fingers crossed and hoping the rain will hold off long enough to get the lumber cut and delivered. We’re expecting some rain on Thursday, but if we have the boards by then, you’ll find me outside under the carport staining away rain or shine. Shoot, even if we have another Tornado Watch I’d be out there. Okay, maybe not… but this girl is ready to get this party started.

I realize that just about every child says this, but my mom makes the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. True story.

Last weekend, Greg and I made two batches using her recipe for a family get together, and they were a huge hit. The other day, we made a batch just because. Yeah, they’re just that good. So good that I’m deeming them blog-worthy. So, without further ado, the recipe:

2/3 Cup Salted Butter, softened
2/3 Cup Shortening
1 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
1 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
1 Tsp Vanilla
1 Tsp Baking Soda
1 Tsp Salt
3 Cups All Purpose Flour
12 oz (or more!) Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips (we’re Ghirardelli fans)

Combine all ingredients except flour and chips. Once you’ve reached an “ice cream like” consistency, add flour, then fold in the chips. I actually put a little more than one 12 oz bag because we like our cookies “chippy”, as Greg says. Chill the dough for about an hour or until its stiffened up a bit. I think the dough cooks even better if you let it chill overnight. This is where I’m supposed to tell you not to eat the dough because raw eggs aren’t good for you…

…but that’s not going to happen. Bake at 375° for 12 minutes (or until the tops aren’t glossy anymore). They are very yummy right when they come out of the oven, but Greg and I think they’re even better after they’ve cooled for a good long time. These cookies are one of those things that are even better the day after. They’re perfect for baking a large batch or two the night before a big get-together.

Once in a while, we like to add pecans for chocolate pecan cookies (which is our favorite combo) or peanut butter chips for yummy chocolate and peanut butter cookies. But, really, you just can’t beat a good ‘ole classic chocolate chip cookie. Oh, and here’s a tip if you want to impress the mother-in-law… after you place the balls of dough on the pan, place about six or seven additional chocolate chips on the outside of each ball. When you take them out of the oven, you’ll have picture-perfect cookies that look like Martha Stewart herself made them.

This weekend, Greg and I are working on the carport yet again. The lumber we scored on Craigslist (more on that here) is being delivered sometime this weekend, and weather permitting, we’re hoping to get some plank staining done so we can get this ball rolling. Happy weekend, everyone!

As we mentioned in this post, we’re currently tackling the carport and turning it into a covered patio / outdoor living area. We have a ton of projects up our sleeves, including giving the floor a face lift, adding a comfy conversation area, and hanging some huge outdoor wall art. Before we get to that, though, we have got to cover the yellowing, peeling ceiling.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve gone back and forth between painting or planking the carport ceiling. Painting would be cheaper, not to mention faster, while planking the ceiling would be more expensive and take a lot longer. If we were making a decision solely based on price, difficulty and turnaround time, painting would no doubt be the answer. When it’s all said and done, though, planking the ceiling would give the space an instant coziness factor, and it would make a much larger statement than just a coat of paint. So even though the road to completion is going to be a bit longer and harder, we’ve decided to plank the carport ceiling.

For inspiration, we turned to Pinterest. Here are a few photos we found during our search…

1 // Even though this space is a lot more modern than ours will be, this photo pretty much sealed the deal for us when it came to making a decision on whether or not to plank the ceiling. I don’t really know what it is about the space – maybe the fact that it has two open sides like our carport – but as soon as I saw it, I thought, “Yeah, we’re totally doing a planked ceiling!”. 2 // Granted, our carport isn’t as grand as this covered patio, but we love how the planks add instant warmth and coziness to the space. 3 // We love the color and the variations of the planks in this inspiration photo. With our space being a lot smaller than this, we’re thinking it would look better to have a little less contrast than this, but still have some variation between planks if possible. We’re hoping to achieve this look by staining some of the planks a bit lighter than others and hanging them in a random pattern.

Okay, so now for the wood. This is where our grand plan of having a planked ceiling started looking more and more difficult. We simply couldn’t figure out what type of wood would be best for this project. It needed to be affordable, light enough to hang on the ceiling, easy to hang (since we want to get this finished before it gets way too hot outside) and good-looking. Having all these things line up at the same time proved to be difficult, but here’s how the process went down…

Option 1 // We started out by pricing out regular wood boards at Lowe’s and Home Depot. This option totaled a bit over $500 for just the wood, and every board we found that was the right width was too thick and heavy to hang on the ceiling.

Option 2 // The next idea was pallet wood. We love the look of the pallet wood walls we’ve seen on blogs lately (especially Cape27′s living room pallet wall). We calculated that in order to cover the entire carport ceiling (which is about 18′x19′) we would need 30 pallets. That’s a lot of pallets. The wood was the right width and thickness, though. We just needed to find a way to get the pallets to our house so we could start taking them apart. We actually even started collecting pallets, but we realized this wouldn’t be the smartest choice when it came to timeliness. Work smarter not harder, right?

Option 3 // During some frantic Googling, I came across Thrifty Decor Chick’s wood plank wall. She used packs of ready-to-stain 4″x8′ tongue and groove planks (similar to these). They’re usually used for typical-looking wall paneling, but they look great stained and hung horizontally on the wall. To get the job done, we figured that we’d need 25 packs of planks (each pack comes with 5 planks). In order to get that many packs, we’d have to special order them from Lowe’s and have them delivered to the store. This option would total to around $371.50 plus tax (again, just for the wood). The tongue and groove feature would make it really easy to install, as well. We were just about to pull the trigger and order the 25 packs of planks, but we realized we’d really like the planks to be wider than 4″ for the look we’re going for. So, moving on to the next idea…

Option 4 // Keeping in mind that thickness mattered, a friend of ours suggested fence boards. Hello! Why didn’t we think of this?! They’re about 1/4″ thick, 6″ wide and 12′ long. We went to Lowe’s to check on pricing, and they offered fence boards for $8.50 a board. We’d need 62 boards, so that would total to around $527. Hoping to get a better price, we even asked them if they had any damaged or weathered ones sitting in the back that they couldn’t sell otherwise. No dice.

Option 5 // Determined to get a better price, we went home and searched “fence boards” on Craigslist. Only a few listings came up, but I called the phone number on the listing that caught my eye and talked to an ultra-nice guy named Gregg. I explained our project to him so he’d get a good idea of what we needed, and after a minute or two of calculations, he quoted us $3.50 for each 6″x12′ oak boards, plus $60 for delivery. That’s a total of $277 with delivery! We didn’t even think about how we’d get these boards to the house! I asked him if I could call him back in a few minutes to talk it over with Greg. I ran the specs and price by him and his immediate reaction was, “Um, yes!” Done deal. I called him back, and the lumber is being delivered this weekend. Now we can breathe. Ahhh…

Once the lumber arrives this weekend, here’s what the rest of our to do list for the ceiling looks like…

• Measure the ceiling
• Buy the lumber
• Remove trim
• Remove light fixtures and repair the boxes
• Add receptacle in the ceiling for patio lights
• Cut boards to needed lengths
• Stain boards
• Rent nail gun
• Chalk support beam placement
• Hang boards
• Hang new light fixtures
• Add finishing trim

As soon as we’re done with these tasks, we’re moving right on to the floor, then quickly onto decorating and finishing touches (finally!). We’re really excited to get this project done. We’ll be one step closer to having a cozy and fun outdoor living area!