The entry was covered in green outdoor carpet and the entire front porch was enclosed in glass. The result was not only unattractive but hot! The west-facing porch heated up like an oven in the afternoon making it completely unusable during warm months and inevitably raising the temperature inside the house.
On Saturday evening we jumped into the project and ripped out the outdoor carpet on the front steps. We were excited to discover concrete steps that are structurally in great shape, even if they don't look very pretty. They are covered in glue from the carpet and painted a lovely shade of yellow to match the house color. In time we'll have to clean them up and replace the top step which is wood and is looking a little rotted, but overall we were pleased with what we found.
On Sunday morning we dove into the rest of the porch demolition with great success! These doors and windows were well secured, but we managed to get them all out with just a drill, a hammer, a couple of ladders and a small crowbar borrowed from our neighbor and pure muscle power.
How do you like Matt's summer haircut?
Fortunately we were able to enlist the help of a neighbor for a few moments to remove the amazingly heavy sliding doors.
Our next door neighbor also came by to help steady the ladder and lend a few strategic pointers and an extra set of hands for the treacherous removal of the windows on the driveway side of the porch.
We found some interesting surprises like the porch details painted onto the glass and a disgusting amount of bugs, spiderwebs and who knows what else behind the boards and glass that we removed.
The project took us most of the day, but we were very excited that we managed to get the whole thing opened up and we are thrilled with how it changes the look and feel of the house! What do you think?
The next steps will be to take down the last few lingering additions to the original porch, clean the whole thing up and patch up the paint. It looks like they most recently repainted the house after they enclosed the porch, so there are areas that are a different shade where we removed the window and door support pieces. The floor of the porch is in good shape but we're not a fan of the green color that it is painted so we plan to repaint the whole thing a nice neutral color for the time being to get us through until we repaint the whole outside of the house. We can't wait to show you the finished product!
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