Evergreens can take the cold, but need lots of light, so that would really need to be your deciding factor. I would suggest that you first try a few dwarf varities and see how well they do with the light you have and go from there. Buy them from a local nursery owned and operated by real nursery people, who really know their stock, not a big box home center that hires part timers who too often don't know the difference between one plant and another. Then when you decsribe your porch, including the direction the light comes from, the pros will be able to recommend what has the best chance of thriving for you and sell you true dwarfs, not chopped back standards, because unless that porch is really huge, just about any standard sized evergreen would simply overwhelm it. However, keep in mind that other than Bonzi's, even dwarf varieties need pretty good sized pots, so condider the space you need for them and what you would presumably want to leave open for furniture, for those wonderful mild days, when an enclosed porch is such a joy. Have fun with it!

gld, You definitely have the right idea of where to avoid if you don't want to find their dens. They like bluffs and rocky areas on south, west and east facing slopes where there are deep cracks in the bluffs or deep fissures in the rocks or holes beneath and between boulders. Usually they will den communally with more than one copperhead in a den and often some other species as well. The one near my house is under a boulder at the edge of a bluff partway up a hillside and is shared with Northern Water Snakes and Eastern Garter Snakes. There is another place near the Missouri River where I can find a dozen communal snake dens near the base of a limestone bluff and several of those dens include a small number of copperheads. One unseasonably warm day in late March this year in the early evening I found 8 adult copperheads basking in 2's and 3's at a total of three different den sites there. I have an out of print Missouri field guide entitled Reptiles of Missouri by Paul Anderson which describes their densites almost perfectly: "The site selected most often for hibernation is a limestone ledge on a timbered hillside with a southern, eastern, or western exposure. In most such ledges there are many cracks and fissures with large amounts of loose rock at the base. Here the copperheads can penetrate holes that go far beyond the frost line, and the flat rocks at the base furnish adequate cover when the copperheads are active in the spring and fall. They usually do not den up in large concentrations at any one specific place. A stip of ledge, perhaps a mile in length, may have a number of dens housing a small number of copperheads." (p. 266) That's as good a description of their dens as I have seen anywhere. In the deep South places like Louisiana and Mississippi they can also den solo inside logs and under single rocks but here where the winters have significant frosts for an extended period of time they almost exclusively use limestone ledges with fissures or rocky areas with significant holes and cracks. People usually associate a big open cave with snake dens, but the really good snake dens with large numbers of snakes are narrow vertical cracks in bluffs that penetrate into the bluff. They don't look like much from a distance because the entrance itself can be quite narrow. But a spring or fall walk along a limestone ledge can be an enjoyable or harrowing experience depending on your perspective.

Why not an automatic garage door. We decided to install one on our workshop so that we can get our larger work projects in and out. When you need to utilize your space just open the door. Yes, I realize you are putting it on the wrong side of the house but the opening is nice and wide and when it is open the "door" is tucked out of the way. Just a suggestion. I like your idea though. You would have to mount the shutter on a post or dowel. Then by turning them 90* you would have access in and out. You could solidify the outside shutters and just use the 2 in the middle? Or make them all mobile?

So, the breezeway originally was the entire depth of the house, but the back end is now laundry/enclosed area? I think screening the front would be nice, especially if you have a nice view out front. We had a breezeway and they made the front part a bedroom and the back a mudroom/passage to the kitchen. They kept the windows and door across the front and people do mistake that door for the front entrance, but what can you do? I'm a porch person, so I say go for the breezeway. We would have liked to revert, but ours is a very large bedroom with very large closet (attached to HVAC) and it would make the house three bedrooms, instead of four. Your room doesn't sound like it has a very practical function as it is so I say, go for it!