I honestly didn't know if I should call this post "Painting the Porch Floor Green" (which is basically what this is about), "Messel Green", or "My Obsession with Amanda Lindroth's Bahamian Home."
We have a large screened in porch on the back of our house.
We are porch people.
We live outside about 9 months of the year and any unusually warm days in the Winter months.
It has been added on to over the years and is a bit quirky for this reason.
People always want to hear the story of our porch "evolution" when they see it the first time :)
When the pandemic struck and lockdown started I began a series of #pandemicprojects to keep myself busy. They all needed to be done anyway and they were a great distraction.
One of these projects was painting the screened in porch floor
and the wall that is inside the porch but is the exterior of our house.
This has been a process because A) it is a large porch as I said B) it is fully furnished with some rather large heavy pieces to move around and C) it has to be painted in a way that the dog rowdy puppy Cooper doesn't track through wet paint so that means blocking off sections to paint one at a time.
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Fresh green floor paint on the left and the dingy old paint on the right. And, yes since it's 2020, let's throw in a broken bone and a walking boot :( |
What does this have to do with Messel Green (whatever that is you ask) and Amanda Lindroth?
If you are as obsessed with her book "Island Hopping" as I am then you are probably beginning to figure this out.
Years ago our deck floor was hunter green but when we screened it in I knew I needed a medium green for the floor because we had some dark green porch furniture and I needed there to be a difference in the greens. I knew my ceilings would be light blue because I am originally from Charleston SC and that's what we do.
I decided to look through some pictures from a trip to the Bahamas for porch inspiration and I kept seeing this unique, not too dark green color that seemed like it could work as a "neutral" on our porch floor. We had a partial 5 gallon bucket of dark green so we mixed in some OOPS paint (remember that??) to lighten it up and matched that green as closely as we could.
(Pictures from the good ol' days when we could travel)
(I'm also now wondering why I didn't buy that center painting of the palm trees on the yellow background?)
Fast forward a bit and the porch needed a fresh coat of paint. This green we mixed had worked out great but it was still a bit yellow-er than this Caribbean green I was after. I had seen pictures of Amanda Lindroth's home in some of the shelter mags by then and she used that same Caribbean green I liked so much! I started searching through my Sherwin Williams fan deck for the perfect color. I narrowed it down to SW Lounge Green. (By the way, another fav designer Eddie Ross recently used Lounge Green in his home restoration!!)
About that time my long awaited copy of "Island Hopping" arrived and there was the story of that particular Caribbean green. It is one of Amanda Lindroth's go to colors and it is named after a famous designer/builder in the Caribbean named (you guessed it) Oliver Messel. He designed homes in Barbados and Mustique in the 60's and 70's and used this green a great deal.
So my color had a name - Messel Green - and if that color is a favorite of Amanda Lindroth whose style is everything I love then it must be the perfect color for my porch floor!! #validation
So here we are, 5 months in to a stay at home situation, and I'm finally about to finish painting my porch floor!!
I'm pretty sure this is more than you want to know about my (or any) porch floor paint color but, then again, we have time on our hands still and this long winded explanation of why my porch floor color is this green might just be what you needed to fill 5 minutes of your day!!
Here is a little look at our porch with it's pretty green (freshly painted!!) floor.
I'm going to start with some pictures I took in the evening.
(I know there's a whole thing about not taking pictures for blogs and IG with lamps on but that's when I love the porch most so I'm going for it.)
I'm standing in one corner (which is against the house) facing the opposite corner.
In this next picture I'm standing in the opposite corner from the one above looking back toward the table and chairs.
I'm standing in this nook (below) that has our hanging/swinging bed and a big, comfy wicker chaise.
If you look at the first picture you can see the golden seahorse outline and the wicker lamp if you need a point of reference for this to make sense. See, it's a lot of floor to paint. That's why it has taken me this whole lockdown to get it done! Not to mention the 629 other projects I kept coming up with :)
What's under the big green tarp, you ask?
It is a pool table. I"ll uncover it and show you sometime.
It's tarped to protect it from the weather and me.
Mostly me because I like to do big, messy projects on it.
(In this picture I am standing at the kitchen door which is where we come out onto the screened porch from the house.)
If you've been following me for even a second then you know all of this furniture, lamps and accessories have been thrifted. Everything is comfy and nothing is too fancy for propping up your feet, sitting a drink down on the table next to you, eating on the furniture or sharing a nap spot with Cooper.
Speaking of Cooper...
We have 10 chairs at the table but we can squeeze in a few more if when we need to.
My BIL made this checkerboard for us several years ago.
Look at the bottle caps he used :)
I think this year is "Corona Extra!"
So now we've come full circle.
I was standing in front of this bar cart when I took the picture across the porch to the opposite corner.
Thank you for joining me for an evening tour of my favorite place "in" our house at my favorite time of day. And if you made it through all of this long-winded look at our screened porch, double thank you!
