The Front Porch at the House

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Hubby and I haven’t had time to work at the new house.  Here at the farm he is chopping silage and he’s working from 5am until 9pm at night.  When he’s out doing that, I’ve been trying frantically to get caught up on things around here.  The farmer that Hubby works for orders in lunch and supper so I don’t even have to cook for Hubby.  That leaves me with long periods of time that I can typically get a lot accomplished in.  But, while we are working, we aren’t getting much done at the house.

Lucky for us, the carpenters are working at the house though.  The new part is all shingled and looking good so they have moved on to builiding the front porch.

Just as a reminder, here is how the house looked when we first bought it.

house-2

We didn’t mind the look of the front of the house but we have always wanted a front porch and we thought it would give the house a grand look if it had one.  So we wanted to somehow keep the look of the old yet get an open front porch.

Here’s how far along the carpenters are in making that dream come true.  I love it and am so happy to see it.

porch-1

You can see that the new porch is going to have a similar roof on the left side as the old porch did.  That was important to as we want to keep the old look of the house.

We went through a huge debate about porch columns.  Originally I wanted round ones but they were REALLY expensive.  I finally let Hubby talk me into getting the ones that all new construction have.  It wasn’t my favorite but we could have saved about $500 if I would settle with them…so I did.

Then we went to the flea market in Clear Lake and found vintage round ones.  They were about $150 less than the ones we ended up buying.  Only problem….

porch-2

There were only 4 of the posts.  Our original drawing showed five.  One on each side of the steps-one on each of the corners to the right in the picture and one in the middle.  While at the flea market, Hubby called our carpenter and talked about it.  The carpenter said that if we go with four posts (being these were vintage, we could only get four) we’d have a pole setting in the middle of the living room window.

That put Hubby and I in a debate.  Get the columns, don’t get the columns.  Save money, don’t save money.  If there had been five posts there would have been no discussion.  We loved the columns.  We just didn’t know if we’d love having a post in front of the window.

In the end, we bought the vintage columns and returned the others.  I am glad we did.

We originally wanted a deeper porch.  Ours is only a little over 6′ wide.  That was vetoed because of the roof angles and the upstairs window.  This is fine though.  We’ll have room for a bench there for sitting.

We also debated about having a wooden porch.  I didn’t even discuss that.  I said cement and demanded cement for the floor.  I knew in years to come when a wooden porch floor would need to be painted, it would be me doing the painting…and the scrapping.  I said I wanted as maintenance free as we could afford…so I won with cement…honestly Hubby liked the cement idea too.

porch-3

Right now the carpenters took an old step of steps from the house and put them here at the end of the porch.  Eventually there will be steps that will come off the porch and lead towards the garage.

It was Hubby’s idea to bring the porch out away from the house.  At one time we talked about wrapping it around this way and including the first window you see into the porch but we opted not….again that would put a bigger ticket on the final price and the porch we were planning was enough.

porch-4

Right now I am doing a little debate about whether we’d like a set of steps going off the porch to the left too.  Luckily that decision can wait.  We can do that anytime if we decide we’d like it.

porch-5
I can say for sure that I am really glad we went with these posts.  The other ones were pretty wimpy looking compared to these.

These pictures were taken Wednesday night.  I’ll make sure to take some Friday night and do another blog post about the porch on Saturday morning.  I can’t wait to see how much they get done.  With all the progress they have made so far this week, I’m wondering if they might be almost finished with the porch…wouldn’t that be nice.

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14 thoughts on “The Front Porch at the House”

  5. Penny

    Love the posts ~ so appropriate for your house! Although you state it’s only six feet wide the porch looks quite grand to me!! Eager to see more this wkend!!

    Reply
  6. Donna

    Love the porch. It needs a swing too. I’d go with the steps going both ways joining them at the corner. Not only will it be convenient it will look great.

    Reply
  8. Rose E. Glassses

    Hello,
    Great looking porch, this adds so much class to your home! I like the way you validate what you need and how what you do will work best for you. We have an old Victorian and we love our porch….I unfortunately, need to paint the deck before the cold cold sets in….you are so smart with your cement floor.
    Happy Remodeling…

    Reply
  11. Debbie Leschisin

    I really like the vintage posts for the porch. They really fit with the style of your house. Cement floor was a great idea! Low/no maintenance!

    Reply
  12. Pdudgeon

    i like the idea of wrap around steps too. Too bad your carpenters couldn’t have made a matching column for you, but maybe that’s a project for a later remodeling job.

    Reply
  14. Judy

    I really like the vintage posts and am guessing that you won’t even notice the one in front of the window as time goes by. Smart decision on the cement for the porch floor. We have a wooden deck that we periodically have to refinish and I really dislike that job even though it looks so nice when it is finished.

    Reply

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