Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Trellis Facelift

The trellis on our front porch was becoming an eye-sore and the tattered rolling blinds we had hanging behind them were even worse. Both were badly weathered and faded.

What to do, what to do . . .

As for the blinds, they were beyond help. They had already been reversed once, and the edges were tattered from our Indiana wind. These were definitely ready for the curb.

Replacing them can wait till warmer weather. For now, the sun feels wonderful!

If we wanted to replace the trellis, we would have to cut back our Clematis, and I hated to lose all that growth and the shade the beautiful vines provided in season.

So we decided to see if we could do anything with what we had. That's always frugal, right?

We carefully sanded each bar, gently moving aside the vines. My husband hand sanded for a while. But I soon went for our little detail sander and cut the job time down considerably.

Once the black mildew was mostly gone and some better wood was exposed, I took a small trim brush and applied some cedar stain to match our siding.

We didn't have to buy new trellis and we were able to save the growth of the Clematis!

I'm so glad we took the time to try to fix the old!

This post is linked to Tackle It Tuesday (see what others are tackling!) and Talk About Tuesday.

5 comments:

Mari said...

It really looks good. Nice job on saving money and a clematis too!

Anonymous said...

Great job, I love that you just refinished it and were able to save it and make it look great and save the plant, an extra bonus!

Anonymous said...

That sounds like a lot of work! Turned out really nice though. Good work.

Rebecca said...

Great job on the trellis!

Dreamer said...

Your tressels look great, but I really love the pictue of your baby on the top of the page. How precious!