Time to Sit Back and Unwind

We spent two years in the planning phase of renovating/expanding our house, as I've mentioned before, and after all that time, we certainly were able to work out pretty much everything with our architect to everyone's mutual satisfaction.  Everything except the front porch.  Our plan called to expand the porch beyond its original footprint and move the front door, and I'll admit that I just took a deep breath on this one.  For some reason all of the other changes to the house really seemed to make good sense, but I just couldn't be sure we were doing the right thing.

I think my hesitation came because a house's front porch is like its face.  Above all, I want our house to remain the home it's been to my family for the past 9 years.  All of the other addition and expansion is some pretty drastic plastic surgery, for sure, but I accepted it more easily because sculpting or changing a friend's figure doesn't seem to change who they are or how you engage with them.  If you change a person's face, though, they may seem like a different person, and I think I've been suspicious of this figurative nose job on my house's beloved face, even if I can be ok with some lipo and butt implants elsewhere.

Tell me that's not what this metaphorically is.  Really big implants.

 I couldn't imagine how I'd use this big porch, and I thought it might change my house's face too much, and you might remember that I was nonplussed when they took out my former master closet to start the expansion.  I'm not a person who reads the ends of books first, I swear, but I can tell you that they're substantively finished with the porch, and I am so pleased with the loving and skillful surgery that's been performed that my fears are dismissed.  When everything is done, my house's face may be different, but it's still right, you know?  It's still my house, new porch and all.

To start, the back wall of the porch was gone, and the floor was mostly gone.  It was not a good place for anyone but my children, who loved to give me extra gray hairs by sprinting along the springy lumber that bridged the gap in the floor.

When they put this siding on the wall, it helped.  One of the things I love about old houses (besides their awesome oldness) is how well made they are.  It doesn't seem like people put a lot of time or care into making anything anymore, so to get something well-made, it needs to be old.  But for this porch, the guys put in the time.  They took care to get things right.

This is some old siding from our house that was saved, stored, and carefully moved to make the siding on the side of the porch where the front door is (south wall) seamless and original.

I'm so sorry that I only have a poor-quality picture, but I promise that if you had looked at that wall in person you would be unable to tell that that siding was not originally in that place.  I had to remind my husband, even, who lived here, that the siding used to stop just to the left of the window, because that's where the right angle was to make the other wall of the porch.  They cut and moved and reinstalled that siding so seamlessly that it nearly wiped my memory of how the porch used to be.

And just look at how beautiful that new siding is.  Do I need to sing an ode to 117 profile lumber?  Better yet, should I write the epic ballad of the awesome carpenters who made sure the old siding and the new siding lined up at the corner so beautifully that the corner piece (another something that probably has an actual name, but I don't know what it is) looks like a sculpture?  Because I can.  I look at these pictures and pet the actual house and practically break into song a la The Sound of Music, but with less actual talent than Julie Andrews.  But this siding starts to make me feel like I'm  in a gazebo in the rain holding hands with this porch.  It's real.

Then, while I'm still weak-kneed over the walls, they took out the old floor and built a new one.  It's even prettier.

Shiny new pressure-treated joists resting on top of solid, 100-year-old-possibly cypress beams is art and music in itself.  You'd think that smooth tongue-in-groove planks lined up to make a diagonal between the post corner and the wall corner would be just gilding the lily, but it's not.  It's just extra pretty, like a cherry tree at sunset.  It might be so pretty it hurts, but it's not too much.  And they're not even done yet.

There's the beadboard ceiling, with the spot for the ceiling fan ready to go.

And rails, to fill in a gap where rails used to be, long ago, and to bridge the gap between old and new. 

Doesn't it often happen this way at least in movies?  You encounter a new acquaintance guardedly.  You don't plan to spend time where they are, but you keep running into them, and each time you notice something new about them, something interesting, something lovely.  Before you know it, you're totally in love. 

I am totally in love with this porch.  They've covered the floor to protect it, and it wants paint to make everything match, our porch swing is still in storage, and soon it will also have some porch lights and a pretty fan (and maybe a new vintage letter box door?), but it doesn't need those things for me to love this place and the face it will be for my house.  I almost can't believe I wasn't fully on board with this place from the beginning, and I look forward to spending many rainy afternoons together.