It is always nice to look back to see where we started and to see how far we’ve come.
Most of the exterior siding is now in place.
David and I painted most of the new wood with Jasco wood preservative that also helps prevent termite infestations. We still have a few places where the wood was put up before we go it treated that we will need to address.The preservative comes in clear and green. I like the green tinted preservative because it is easier to see if you missed any spots.
Our neighbors asked if the green tint was the color we had decided to paint the house? We have been telling everyone that we are going with some shade of green. I think they were worried.
We have made some progress on disposing of our trash pile.
One of my favorite things about the new back porch?
From the dining room window, you are now looking at a window on the back porch instead of a steel door.
You can also see the window from the living room.
The bathroom floor has been built up and is now level with the back porch floor.
We purchased sconces on sale from Restoration Hardware. They are modern but they don’t feel out of place in the room. I gave up trying to find antique sconces. Most of the period sconces that we happened to like were way out of our price range.
I took a wrong turn somewhere with my wiring. That is why one of the sconces is mssing a bulb and shade. For some reason the light stays on all the time and I’m not able to turn it off from the fixture or the wall switch. One more project to add to my never ending To-Do list.
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The back looks great!
A question, though~ It looks more like an enclosed room to me than a porch. Am I missing something? Are you insulating it or will it stay outside the environmental envelope?
BTW, I sent pics of your trash pile to my mother, GF, and some neighbors to prove that I’m not just a plague on the neighborhood: “H&D had an even bigger pile, but look at the ultimate results! I’m NOT crazy!”
My girl now knows who I’m talking about when I refer to Heather & David, so I guess I’m officially a fan.
This room started it’s life as an open back porch. It was closed in, rather poorly, sometime in the late 1940′s by our estimates from speaking with the former owner’s daughter. When the porch was enclosed they also added a small 3′ x 5′ addition to the original porch. This addtion had a flat roof.
The porch, although closed in, was rather primitive and put together out of recycled materials from other areas of the house and who knows where? This would have been shortly after WW II when building materials were scarce.
A new roof was put on our house a year before we purchased it. It was improperly installed, leaked like a sieve and had to be replaced but that’s another story. At this time they extended the original roof line to continue over the flat roofed addition.
We could tell that the roof line wasn’t original and before we tore into the walls we were hoping to find something cool like a pergola waiting for us at that end of the porch. Instead we discovered a crappy addition riddled with dry rot and termite damage.
The porch is a long narrow space that has a half bath at one end and the other end, that was added on, will become our laundry room. The area in between those 2 rooms is large enough to hold 2 small chairs but not much else.
We plan to put up insulation, drywall and refinish the space, so it really is more of an enclosed room. Although the space is too narrow to really function as a room. It will be more like a nice, long utility area.
When we first saw the porch it was all open wall beams, asbestos siding, and some windows that were mosting being held in place with security bars. Someone had begun to convert the addition to a shower and had gotten as far as running the plumbing and putting up gray wall board. The back porch had more of the feel of a barn or an attached outhouse so I didn’t think of it as a room. I guess that just stuck!
How’s that for a short answer?! More about our back porch than most people will ever want to know.
BTW, David and I had the best laugh at the idea of our trash pile being emailed out as the standard for “plague of the neighborhood.” So, funny!