New Porch-Update

July 30th….

We added rails!

Surprise!!! No, I didn’t fall off the face of the earth. I just have been tired. I work, then come home at night and sit. I have been going through medication adjustments, and my ‘get up and go’ has gone AWOL. Hopefully that will all be fixed soon…..or maybe it’s just laziness. Who knows? I mostly have been posting on FB. It’s quick, and addictive.

Anyway, we did an upgrade to our porch! I am so excited, and loving it!! We did this last weekend. So glad we did, because today was rainy and tomorrow is supposed to be too.

Years ago, (and this is even after an upgrade from the brown siding and green astro turf, I painted the brick on the planter to blend in with the new siding. Here is what it looked like before. I wish I could find my photo album of the house when we first bought it so I could show you what it looked like back then.

The carpet was wearing out, and we never were happy with the ‘platform’ we built to step up into the house.  Before we moved in, people just had to take a HUGE step up into the house from the porch . People have tripped or fallen off the platform, and we have contemplated for years what we could do differently than carpet that would be safe. This year, the idea came into my head to build a ‘deck’ over the original porch floor and raise it up so when we stepped out onto the porch floor it was be just about the same level as the floors in the house, and the porch floor would be all one level, then build a step the width of the porch.

There are a lot of photos, and here is the transformation. Enjoy the process. Louie and my brother Jack did this all in about 6 hours.

The materials arrived from Lowe’s on Tuesday June 30th.

Because we were going to be raising the porch floor about 8 inches, we bought 12” pavers and stacked them on top of the brick planter, which would eventually become more of a bench.

Years ago, we piled a lot of rock on top of the dirt, so Louie removed a 5 gallon bucket of river rock and put some smaller pavers in there for a base for the pavers he would stack on top.

 Louie used liquid nails to secure them so they wouldn’t move around.

On July 4th, the project began by building the framework for the ‘deck’.

It took Louie, Jack, my sisterinlove Polly and I to set it in place on the porch. With the new frame, we actually made the porch floor longer front to back than it originally was. They brought it out to the edge of the brick planter.

Looking out from inside the house.

Building the step.

Finishing up the floor.

This is how the porch looked this week, until Wednesday night.

On Wednesday night, our friend Jeff picked up our custom cut 2’ x 8’ x 2” piece of Indiana limestone on his way home from work. It took 6 men to lift it out of the truck and place it on top of the pavers.

After they left, I got out my can of paint and painted the pavers and the lower piece of limestone.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I love my porch going from this……

To this. #onehappygirl!!!!

Update July 30: We added handrails tonight.