Room for Change: A Room With a View

If you motor past Charlie Hailey’s cabin on a nameless island on the Homosassa River about two miles from the Gulf Coast of Florida, you just might spot the architect on his porch, reclining in a cobalt blue Adirondack chair. Charlie Hailey’s porch is many things — the place to spot dolphins working their way along incoming tides in the river, or a lookout to wait for manatee to exhale near the lagoon, or a perch to catch the sounds of an osprey family that nests nearby — but it’s mostly, for him, a muse. 

Hailey is a professor of architecture at the University of Florida and the author of Porch: Meditations on the Edge of Nature (on Amazon and on Bookshop), who has spent some time, as he put it in an essay in Orion, “trying to think like a porch.” 

But he also does much of his thinking on a porch.

A porch, he explains, straddles indoors and out, private and public, sheltered and exposed. Consequently, even though its popularity thrived in an era before air conditioning, it remains uniquely suited to this moment in time, as we confront challenging questions around privacy, around community, around climate. As Hailey put it, “sitting on a porch calms me down but it also makes me anxious, because here, on the house’s edge, nature tells how everything is changing.”

Attitudes toward porches are changing too, according to Hailey, who cites construction industry data reporting an increase from 42 to 65 percent in homes built with a porch between 1992 and 2016. Millennials — known for their love of outdoor recreation — are evidently particularly enamored of porches, with 78% of them considering it either desirable or necessary. “This porch renaissance hints at our openness to the outdoors,” Hailey wrote. “It points toward nature.”

Hailey himself has a front row seat for nature. That blue plastic Adirondack chair? Scavenged from the shore courtesy of Hurricane Helene. (“Probably Polywood,” he tells me, “which, from what I understand, floats quite well.”) 

The side tables? He made them, with wood delivered by the same storm. 

The furniture on our porches also straddles both indoors and out. We want it to be comfortable and attractive, while also being able to withstand the weather. Like everything else about porches, Hailey has considered the furniture. “It has to be sustainable,” he insists, and resilient — “the perfect environmental equilibrium, a kind of balance.” He looks for durability and natural materials like hardwoods. 

Hailey has used salvaged wood that storms have blown his way to make small tables, as well as the blue Adirondack chair. When the storms hit, he explains, “a lot of people’s possessions get redistributed.” Residents try to ensure that they’re returned to the rightful owners, but oftentimes, items just get “adopted” by new owners. 

Even without hurricanes and tropical storms to deliver furniture your way (and let’s be grateful for that!), you can find great, previously loved porch furnishings at sites like Facebook Marketplace, eBay, your local Habitat for Humanity Restore, Goodwill, Offerup, or higher end vintage furniture sites like Chairish or your local consignment stores. 

If you’re buying secondhand, there are considerations, given that outdoor furniture often takes a beating. If the furniture is metal, look for rust spots. If you’re purchasing online, ask for photos from all angles. Rust isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker, but make sure it hasn’t caused any structural damage, and prepare to employ some elbow grease and a metal brush to get your items in good shape. 

Wicker is a classic and often worth the money. But outdoor wicker doesn’t always age well. Look for signs of broken strands (wicker can be repaired — but the sooner, the better) or rotting. Hailey has had better luck with rattan, which is well suited for his hot, wet climate. “We flood, but rattan dries really quickly,” he said. Also, “it’s relatively light and it sort of ventilates itself.” 

If you’re purchasing new, look for furniture that’s sustainably made. If you’re going with wood, look for the third-party verified Forest Stewardship Council certification, which means it’s from wood sourced in an environmentally-friendly, socially responsible, and economically viable manner. Marketplace editor Elizabeth Weinstein recommends furniture with a warranty to provide both peace of mind and some indication that the furniture is built to last. 

If you’re open to plastic, there are increasingly sustainable options, including the pioneer of recycled plastic, Polywood, which has been around since 1990. Polywood uses HDPE plastic (primarily milk and detergent jugs) destined for landfill or the ocean, turns it into pellets, and then turns the pellets into furniture. “They were the originators,” says Megan Pierson, EVP of Polywood. “They found that it was more durable. It can basically be engineered to withstand sun, salt, rain without cracking, rotting, fading, and is virtually maintenance free.” According to Charlie Hailey, Polywood furniture can withstand hurricanes too. “He’s right,” laughs Pierson, who notes that they hear “so many cool customer stories.” And Elizabeth will be delighted that Polywood comes with a 20-year warranty (though Pierson says, “we call it forever furniture.”) Given that it lasts a very long time (or forever), it’s nice to know that Polywood offers a number of different styles of furniture. 

Other companies are getting into the recycled plastic furniture marketplace, including Trex (check out what Dear Dot had to say about Trex’s composite decking material). Patio Productions did a comparison of the top recycled plastic lumber brands, including Trex, and reported that “Trex uses a proprietary blend of recycled wood fibers and recycled plastic film, allowing their products to closely mimic the look and feel of natural wood. They’ve also incorporated using Polywood’s HDPE lumber.” The reviewers also took a look at Berlin Gardens, which also uses a composite of recycled plastic and wood fibers and incorporates Amish handcrafting techniques that, Patio Productions says, allows for great attention to detail and sets the resulting furniture apart. Seaside Casual, another recycled plastic patio furniture manufacturer, similarly relies on composite materials. The site declares Polywood a winner in the sustainability contest, noting its vertically-integrated manufacturing and zero-waste process, something Pierson also emphasized, adding that “what really sets us apart is true transparency.” 

There are others, including Loll Designs and Neighbor, which offer a variety of style options and materials.

However you furnish your porch or patio, Charlie Hailey has some parting thoughts about the value of such a place. He recently participated in an architecture conference in Venice at which he incorporated a porch into the overall theme of “architecture of generosity.” Porches, he says, are a hybrid of public and private, something, he says, that’s really important right now as we consider the value of community. 

“I think a lot about how we can connect to nature and how we can learn from what we see and from all the amazing things around us,” he says on the phone from his porch in Florida. “And with climate change, with the changes around us, porches allow for a kind of increased sensitivity to all those things, right?”

But perhaps most importantly, Hailey says, “I think also that porches are just a really good place to sit and read and relax and daydream.”

Protect your Porch Furniture

Whatever porch furniture you’ve chosen — second-hand or new —  let’s talk about how to ensure that it looks good for a long time. 

Keep wood, plastic, metal, wicker, or rattan furniture clean with a few simple steps:

• Vacuum (using the brush attachment) twice a year — when you take it out and before you put it away. Periodically clean it using a mild soap and water mixture and soft-bristle scrub brush. Avoid abrasive, chlorinated cleansers. 

• Bluedot’s Marketplace editor Elizabeth notes that Sunbrella fabric for cushions and pillows really does hold up over time, though she recommends bringing cushions indoors during inclement weather. If you’ve been playing (and losing) the “is-it-going-to-rain/should-I-bring-in-the-cushions?” game, get yourself a furniture cover. 

• If your cushions are mildew stained, mix hot water and oxygen bleach (never chlorine bleach, which will discolor) and scrub with a soft-bristle brush, then pat dry.

Porches: The Cure for What Ails You

In 1882, tuberculosis killed one in seven people infected in the United States and Europe. And without a cure for the highly infectious disease, those afflicted were often prescribed what essentially amounted to fresh air and a cottage porch. Dr. Edward L. Trudeau, a resident of New York City whose brother died from TB, retreated with his own case of the illness to the natural beauty of the Saranac Lake region in upstate New York, an area he was familiar with from his youth, where he expected that he, too, would die. When, instead, he began to recover, he established a treatment center in 1884 for other TB sufferers, dubbed the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium. 

The “fresh air” prescription gave birth to the rise of sleeping porches or rooftop bedrooms, including one in the White House. Today’s White House Solarium “dates to the early twentieth century, when President William Howard Taft added a rough-built sleeping porch to the roof of the White House so his family would have a cool place to pass Washington’s steamy summer nights,” the White House Historical Association tells us. Charlie Hailey, author of Porch: Meditations on the Edge of Nature (on Amazon and on Bookshop), described it as “a screened porch built on top of the White House so that they could crawl out of the attic windows of the White House and sleep outdoors.”

With our most recent pandemic, porches found a prescriptive purpose again — as a place to gather safely outdoors, and host concerts or performances. 

Where to Find Secondhand Porch Furniture on MV

Martha’s Vineyard is blessed with a robust circular economy. As one Islander put it, “you give something away and end up buying it back at a yard sale a decade later.” Here are some of the best spots to score porch furniture:

• Chicken Alley

• Act Two

• Dumptique at the West Tisbury Dump

• Habitat for Humanity

• MV Bargain Bin

• MV Stuff for Sale

• Vineyard Gazette’s Goodies and Giveaways