Fresh Air Rooms
“And they were canopied by blue sky…so cloudless, clear and purely beautiful.” ~Lord Byron
In my book, “Welcome Home-Simple Tips for Turning Your House into a Luxurious Retreat,” on page 54, I wrote all about ‘Fresh Air Rooms.’ Porches, sun rooms, patios, decks, and gazebos would all fall into this category.
The wrap around porch on the front of our house was definitely one of the things that attracted us to our little Victorian cottage. When the weather gets nice we figure out ways to spend as much time out there as possible. It’s not a huge porch, but there’s enough room for a table and 4 chairs and a hammock, so I’m not complaining. It’s also screened in, which makes a difference when you live in the state where mosquitoes hunt humans. 🙂 We have a candle chandelier over the table which makes dining on the porch at night so pretty. The combination of the candles and the fireflies dancing in our front garden make it feel like the set of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Yesterday Jeff and I got Chinese takeout and had a little ‘picnic’ on the front porch while it rained. It was Jeff’s idea to get lunch to go and bring it home, and I’m so glad we did. It turned lunch into a sort of impromptu date. Here are some other fun ideas:
- Set up 3-panel screens around your deck where you desire extra privacy
- Stack patchwork quilts and knit blankets on a chair for evening and night time porch lounging and dining.
- String clear, Italian globe lights everywhere to transform your outdoor room into an Italian piazza.
- a little cart with wheels can hold plates, cups, napkins and silverware or double as a portable bar.
- Treat yourself to new, colorful rag rugs every summer.
Tonight we’re grilling out and I think I’ll set the table on the front porch again. It’s 73 degrees and gorgeous! Why spend the evening in the house? In fact…I think I’ll go chill a bottle of wine and maybe take a little hammock nap before the hubby gets home.
How do you use your Fresh Air rooms?
~Melissa
Its Me Again!!!
My Fresh Air Room ~ Patio/Deck
A porch can extend an invitation to a house. It doesn’t have to be an exact, formal structure of a porch with large columns and wide steps, but some resemblance of a temporary point between the outside and the doorway inside your home such as a stoop, patio, sunroom, gazebo or a deck. The things that make a porch are the intangible things that transform the mere structure of a house into the uniqueness of a home.
Living in the Midwest, our front porch is really a deck that not so gracefully steps down to a patio but, nonetheless, it plays the role well enough. It eases the entry into the front door and gives you that polite transitional space.
The back entry has a patio that on warm nights after the yard has been mowed and the laundry taken off the line we can sit back on the wicker patio chairs, drink sweet lemon ice tea and watch as the sun goes down, talk to the neighbors over the fence to their open patio until the lights go on, the flying beetles and mosquitoes signal us it’s time to retreat into the house.
While grilling I can look at my many potted arrangements including lots of pansies on the patio and my finishing touch is a resting place under the shade tree with a hammock between two large shade trees or my favorite the patio swing.
It’s too bad spring and summer can’t last all year long!
Sandy Erdman
Thanks Sandy! What a beautiful description of a Fresh Air Room! We’ll have to share a cup of tea or lemonade in our fresh air rooms sometime 🙂
nowadays, it is sometimes difficult to get fresh air in big cities and even in suburbs.`.’
Elizabeth,
Sadly, that is true. I hope you have the opportunity to get out of the city and breathe in some fresh, country air this summer 😉