The Porch with a House Attached

One of the drawbacks of a very small house is the stir-crazy factor.  Our old cottage (above) had “enough” space inside.  But, on a rainy day or when we had a lot of guests….  aaaagggghhhhh!

There was a long, skinny enclosed porch on the front of our house.  It made no sense and the nine windows barely opened, so it was really stuffy.  But we did use it when we had overflow or needed a place to ESCAPE.

After a few years of this, we realized that we desperately needed outside space where we could hang out and decided to add a deck to the front of the house.  The plan was to ultimately open up the enclosed porch, but that was a much bigger job ( ie: it was holding up the second floor), so we attacked the deck project first.

We wanted a big front deck with a little jog off to the right to place a couple of Adirondack chairs and an umbrella where someone (me) could (hide) read.

We chose to use Trex  instead of wood for the deck floor because it is durable, soft on the feet and a lot less expensive.  This is the soft gray color.

Here it is, finished!  This is before we planted our tiny hydrangeas all around the deck.  They took 100 years to fill in, but finally did.

Miriam Websters definition of a deck is: a flat floored roofless area adjoining a house.  My definition of a deck is: a place to gather with family and friends.  Watch a sunset.  Have a party.  Read a book.  Take a nap.  Sunbathe.  Host an outdoor dinner.  Grill.  Enjoy a cocktail or two.

Which we did.

Our project to open up the enclosed porch got postponed for a bit.  Some upstairs windows decided to fall out, so they got replaced.  Then we had to reshingle the house around the new windows.  But, finally we were able to do it.

   

My mother coined the term “a porch with a house attached” and she was right.  Everything we did moved outside.  We had a fabulous covered area now that the enclosed porch was open and a great deck.

The hydrangeas grew in.

   
Parties became frequent.

A lot of our initial deck furniture was left behind in the house from the estate sale.  Costco and L.L. Bean helped out too.  For a while, we had a giant sleeper sofa outside under the covered porch.  Many guests ended up sleeping over on that couch.  It looked awful, but was obviously comfortable!

    
Many memories have been created here.

In so many ways, I think it was one of the best investments we ever made.

In memory of my wonderful stepfather, Barry Held.  On our porch.

the wry home