Haint What?
Just look at this front porch!! There's just so much greatness going on with the brick porch and facade, topiaries, blue ceiling, black shutters and rocking chairs, the stained front door. I know what you're thinking, "wait, you said blue ceiling?" With a porch with so much curb appeal it could have been easy to miss that haint blue ceiling.
Can you imagine how much it would cost to build a house with that much detail work today?
Now I've known about porch ceilings being painted blue to trick insects and wasps into thinking it's the sky and to build their nests somewhere else because of my Mother. She has a beautiful, cozy, want to take a nap back porch with a painted blue ceiling just for that reason. Ok, really, she also just loves any shade of blue and will put it anywhere if she could. No, really, she just got a blue kitchen sink. But in actuality, the blue paint color might not keep the insects away. Well, anymore at least. Apparently, what might have kept insects away years and years ago was when people painted with milk paint. Supposedly the lime in milk paint kept insects away. Either way, insects, or no insects, is a unique feature and is still popular in the South.
Talk about a napping porch
I know you're still wondering what haint means. Well long, long ago in the deep South, we're talking Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, ceilings were painted haint blue. A haint was a ghost, or a lost soul. And we're not talking about Casper the friendly ghost, we're talking ghost from a horror film. So people would paint their porch ceilings blue to represent water because evil spirits couldn't pass through water. And the blue obviously represented water. Now, if it was me, my whole house would have been blue. Blue siding, blue door, blue ceiling, blue windows. Let's even landscape with blue. I'm not looking for any haints to pass through my walls.
loving the mounted planters and lanterns
imagine how old this house is
I'm done. I'd never leave this spot if this was my house. Meanwhile my guests would be thinking "what? you get that comfy couch and i get this wooden stool? really?" I mean you can only be polite so much. am i right?
I'm a sucker for stone houses. mix that with lanterns and the haint ceiling and this is perfection. via
in case you couldn't tell, lanterns are big right now ;) You gotta click this link and see what this house originally looked like. get ready to be blown away
obsessing over the pattern on the transoms
No judgement if the next time I drive by and your entire house is blue. But maybe start with a small project this weekend and start with your porch ceiling first.
Thanks so much for reading!
Tucker