Internet, if I knew one thing to be true once upon a time, it was this: I was not an outdoorsy person. Nor was I a lake person. Except… then we bought a house with a big porch. At the lake. In a community designed to be walkable and all about hanging out on your front porch. OUTDOORS.

And as we are now waist-deep in our third summer at Carlton Landing, Simon and I have both come to the conclusion that yes, we are lake people and yes, we legitimately enjoy being outdoors.

Don’t be fooled – Oklahoma is hot as blazes and humid to boot. But after many a languid evening spent on the porch of a friend’s home laughing and enjoying the breeze, my brain started spinning on how we could better maximize our own front porch which frankly had been low on the totem pole of Projects We Are Working On.  I started chatting with the Dash & Albert folks about doing a story on outdoor living after High Point in April and we started tossing around ideas about doing a post about upholstered indoor/outdoor furniture (which I LOVE) but the scale just wasn’t quite right for our porch that’s on the relatively smallish side.

The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that we NEEDED a porch swing. Like a big gorgeous hanging day bed to spend hours lounging on, book in one hand and cold drink in another, wiling away the hours while the kids played up and down the boardwalk.

It made sense: it’d be like a custom built piece of furniture that we could cushion with plenty of indoor/outdoor pillows and we could also pair with an outdoor rug underfoot (also working double duty as a giant doormat to keep people from tracking dirt and dust into the house). Then we could also have the flexibility to pair other chairs (like our existing rocking chairs) or these indoor/outdoor poufs for more versatile seating. And naturally we’d need some kind of table situation.

Then I started playing around with color schemes. The exterior of the house is a deep woodsy green with creamy white accents. I didn’t feel locked into this too much — I felt like the house would act more like a neutral backdrop than anything and would allow the colors I chose for the rug and pillows to really pop.  This is what this looked like in my mind:

Plenty of my favorite nautical blues balanced with crisp white, and a fun pop of a coral-orange for contrast.  Since the porch is a natural extension of the house, it also made visual sense to go with the color scheme that’s already happening in the main living room.

So in my mind, it was all a go. YES! Success! It’ll be beautiful! But back to the swing for a minute.

This was Simon: meh.

This was me: YASSSSSSSSS. It’ll be amazing!

Simon: Nope.

Me: BUT … YES! BUY INTO MY VISION!

Simon: a twin size daybed is not going to fit on the porch.

Me: Yes it wi … wait, no. Actually, you’re right. It won’t.

So I went back to the drawing board and began to formulate a design plan that would fit the scale for our particular porch layout. And because I’m like a dog with a bone and was deadset that he would LOVE it once it was done, I did a few things. First, I wrote a post all about porch swings to get a visual on some pretty fantastic porch layouts.

Then I researched swing designs and determined proper placement. Because our house has a side yard and our porch is open to it on that side, it seemed like the most logical location. Simon was also very concerned with the swing obstructing the door on that side, which made sense.

A friend of ours at Carlton Landing is a swing building ninja and came over to walk it through with me. I drug couch cushions onto the porch to get a better idea of scale. There was much hemming, hawing, and gnashing of teeth as I finally got Simon to trust me that maybe – just maybe! – this was going to turn out to be absolutely gorgeous.

The reveal will be here next week and I can’t wait to show it to you! (Thanks to the awesome folks at the Annie Selke company for tagging along on my vision!!!)