The reveal
Introducing the newest addition (literally) to our home. Hello, outdoor living space!
Before
DO NOT be fooled - this was the screened porch on its best day in history, after a WHOLE day of being cleaned top to bottom and inside out. Every other day, it was our pollen-and-dust-covered-junk room.
After
Pretend you don't see the wall of clutter. And that eyesore of a screen door. We'll get to the mess...eventually.
Before
After
Oh, praise the Lord. So nice. So much better than the musty, pollen-y, impossible-to-keep-clean, dumping-ground screened porch.
Back story, for those who care.
In 2003 we moved into this house. It was half its current size, perfect for us. Living room, small eat-in kitchen, bath, and two bedrooms, one of which we used as an office-ish. Your basic late-sixties red brick rectangle ranch, with a half-enclosed carport too narrow to hold a car.
The front of the house was plain, a concrete stoop beneath the unused front door and nappy, prickly, ginormous, super-square hedges beneath the front windows. Le yikes.1
From day one it has been in my plans for this house to add a front porch. Simple concrete slab and A-frame roof. Not hard. But oh, the curb appeal.
Well, amid the Crazy That Was 2005, we embarked upon a reconfiguration/remodel/size-doubling addition to the house. While living in it, which is a whole nother story. A story I will not retell, because it is just so traumatic that I might go into the ugly cry.2
But part of the whole construction-crew-is-here-so-why-not plan was to rip out those dastardly hedges (hoo-rah), bust up the stoop, and move ahead with the porch.
One problem.
We ran out of money.
No porch. Amazing house, more than enough space for a couple of mini-me's. So I humbly accepted our predicament under the stipulation that we would NOT be landscaping the front of the house, and that would serve as the motivation to add the porch as soon as possible.
And then, well, life happened. Jobs and pregnancy and babies and general apathy and poorness - we became numb to the non-landscaped bare naked front of the house.
An opportunity arose this year (tax refund, thank you Aden!) to get the porch done. And I am pumped, people.
In the process of planning the porch, we got to looking at the carport area and wondering over how we could make it more usable and less of a dump-slash-pain. Fully enclose and finish? Replace windows?
Or, what if we just do away with the windows and dividing wall, and just open the whole thing up?
Angels sang. The same ones that were missing from my kitchen earlier this month.
Then in the process of wondering over the carport area, we thought, well, behind the carport is the perfect place for a deck. We could put the table and grill there to really open this space up, and have a place to watch the kids play in the backyard.
More angels. Louder angels.
A few weeks later, a meeting with the contractor. Sometime after that, a day spent oh-so-carefully removing two hundred and twenty-one glass panels and demolishing the screened porch. Now, perfection.
Except, not entirely.
I still don't have my front porch.
We ran out of money.
It was my call to do the deck first, for the sake of usability. The porch will come in a few years. Hey, I've lived with our brick-mud-grass facade for six years. A little longer won't kill me.
It's a great life lesson, right? Learned twice. Sometimes you run out of money.
Yeah.
Um, what was this post about? Oh, the deck.
If you're still here, enjoy a few pics I've been saving of its maiden voyage last weekend.
1I ♥ YHL!
2I ♥ Angie Smith!
DO NOT be fooled - this was the screened porch on its best day in history, after a WHOLE day of being cleaned top to bottom and inside out. Every other day, it was our pollen-and-dust-covered-junk room.
After
Pretend you don't see the wall of clutter. And that eyesore of a screen door. We'll get to the mess...eventually.
Before
After
Oh, praise the Lord. So nice. So much better than the musty, pollen-y, impossible-to-keep-clean, dumping-ground screened porch.
Back story, for those who care.
In 2003 we moved into this house. It was half its current size, perfect for us. Living room, small eat-in kitchen, bath, and two bedrooms, one of which we used as an office-ish. Your basic late-sixties red brick rectangle ranch, with a half-enclosed carport too narrow to hold a car.
The front of the house was plain, a concrete stoop beneath the unused front door and nappy, prickly, ginormous, super-square hedges beneath the front windows. Le yikes.1
From day one it has been in my plans for this house to add a front porch. Simple concrete slab and A-frame roof. Not hard. But oh, the curb appeal.
Well, amid the Crazy That Was 2005, we embarked upon a reconfiguration/remodel/size-doubling addition to the house. While living in it, which is a whole nother story. A story I will not retell, because it is just so traumatic that I might go into the ugly cry.2
But part of the whole construction-crew-is-here-so-why-not plan was to rip out those dastardly hedges (hoo-rah), bust up the stoop, and move ahead with the porch.
One problem.
We ran out of money.
No porch. Amazing house, more than enough space for a couple of mini-me's. So I humbly accepted our predicament under the stipulation that we would NOT be landscaping the front of the house, and that would serve as the motivation to add the porch as soon as possible.
And then, well, life happened. Jobs and pregnancy and babies and general apathy and poorness - we became numb to the non-landscaped bare naked front of the house.
An opportunity arose this year (tax refund, thank you Aden!) to get the porch done. And I am pumped, people.
In the process of planning the porch, we got to looking at the carport area and wondering over how we could make it more usable and less of a dump-slash-pain. Fully enclose and finish? Replace windows?
Or, what if we just do away with the windows and dividing wall, and just open the whole thing up?
Angels sang. The same ones that were missing from my kitchen earlier this month.
Then in the process of wondering over the carport area, we thought, well, behind the carport is the perfect place for a deck. We could put the table and grill there to really open this space up, and have a place to watch the kids play in the backyard.
More angels. Louder angels.
A few weeks later, a meeting with the contractor. Sometime after that, a day spent oh-so-carefully removing two hundred and twenty-one glass panels and demolishing the screened porch. Now, perfection.
Except, not entirely.
I still don't have my front porch.
We ran out of money.
It was my call to do the deck first, for the sake of usability. The porch will come in a few years. Hey, I've lived with our brick-mud-grass facade for six years. A little longer won't kill me.
It's a great life lesson, right? Learned twice. Sometimes you run out of money.
Yeah.
Um, what was this post about? Oh, the deck.
If you're still here, enjoy a few pics I've been saving of its maiden voyage last weekend.
1I ♥ YHL!
2I ♥ Angie Smith!
Comments