Hanging the Porch Swing

So the swing is constructed, but there are two problems- 1) it’s unpainted (which apparently isn’t ideal) and 2) it is hard to swing on it when it’s sitting on the floor!

Thankfully, I have an amazingly talented wife to help me with problem 1.  Remember, I am the guy who wanted to “just grab a yellow” from the store for our family room, so I need some help in the decorating department.  Lynne chose to paint the swing in a really good looking, faded white that kind of looked like a faded white wash.  This [easyazon_link identifier=”B01GWBLGLW” locale=”US” tag=”farmhouse020-20″]Miss Mustard Seed[/easyazon_link] paint was really cool because it came in the mail as a powder, and it was up to us to add water to make it the consistency we wanted.  So getting that faded white wash look was actually kind of easy!

Lynne did two coats of milky whitewash and waited a week before going over the whole piece with a rag soaked in [easyazon_link identifier=”B000BZZ4ZU” locale=”US” tag=”farmhouse020-20″]tung oil[/easyazon_link] to finish it.  She followed the online guidelines for oiling it and I think it turned out pretty well!

While she painted the swing, I started painting the back porch.  We decided to continue using Benjamin Moore’s Capitol White– the same color as our kitchen cabinets and porch ceiling.

With the construction and painting complete, we now have to hang this bad boy.  This may sound like an easy task, but you seriously don’t want the swing to come crashing to the floor when people actually try to use it.

First thing is to get hardware capable of even holding the amount of weight we are talking about.  I estimate the swing itself is around 150 lbs and two people would be an additional 400 lbs, so this hardware needs to hold a total of 550 lbs minimum.  Thankfully, our neighborhood Lowes had some nice 190 lb test galvanized eyelet screws (go with galvanized to avoid rust), making the max load a healthy 760 lbs.  We knew the ceiling attachment would be two points rather than four since that’s the style we wanted, so we ended up finding a sweet hitching ring with a 500 lb capacity making its limit 1000 lb!  That should definitely hold me lazily plopping down on the swing 🙂

You also need to make sure you have a strong enough beam to support the weight.  With her usual great foresight, Lynne had one of the support beams in the porch roof reinforced when the porch was created.  However, this is pretty important since even the strongest setup will come crashing down if the ceiling beams can’t support the weight.

Now you’ve got to start measuring to make sure you not only put the ceiling anchors the correct distance apart, but also so that the swing is 1) in the middle of the room, 2) far enough away from the back wall to not hit it (we gave around three feet clearance or so) and 3) swings in parallel with the porch walls.  Fairly important stuff because you do NOT want to have to rehang that heavy thing!

From there, the ceiling anchors go into the support beams, and the eyelet screws go through the armrests into the armrest supports for some added strength.

I attached the chain to both the ceiling using quick links (1000 lb+ capacity) and found these cool, ornamental anchor shackles (300 lb capacity) to attach the chain to the swing.

(The shackles were kind of a pain to attach initially because of the weight of the swing, so other hardware is probably less annoying to use if the aesthetics aren’t important.)

A few more touches before we’re all done and ready to enjoy!!!