http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/test/gal020824077557.html

Here is a link that might be useful: house pic

Lynn,

My wife and I put a covered front porch on our house in 2005. Here is my response to someone else who asked similar questions to yours last year:

"You might want to check out the following web site: http://www.vintagewoodworks.com. I purchased two paperback books from them, Porch Design and Architectural Products. The Porch Design book gave me some good ideas for the type of porch we added to our house. Their Architectural Products book has pictures of their products on porches, and really gave me some good ideas. A lot of the same pictures are on their web page, but I liked the fact that the books are small and easy to read. For little cost (I think both came to less than $15), I got some good ideas that I spent weeks looking for on the Internet and in house remodeling books/magazines - and really never did find much that way."

For landscaping, I found a book at our local library specific to our part of the country that had a bunch of landscaping ideas for different situtations. I liked the fact that the book had complete landscaping for the siutation. They had one for a covered front porch, and even broke that down into "gets lots of sun" and "gets lots of shade"

One note - only you and your spouse will know what works for you. You can get ideas off this forum, but no one can tell you what will work for you. With that in mind, here are some thoughts:

1. The layout of your home from the photo would lead me to suggest you have room for a porch that spans from the front door to the end of the house to the right (away from the garage). This assumes you want a functional front porch and not merely decorative.
2. You want to make a functional porch at least 8 feet wide. Ten feet would probably be better, and your lot looks like it is big enough for a ten foot wide porch.
3. I love pillors on a covered porch. If you have them, get the big ones - the 6 inch ones. The ones commomly found at Home Depot or Lowes are the 4 inch ones. They are simply too small to look good on a porch when viewed from the road.
4. Find a good contractor and get them to help you design your porch. Good ones have lots of experience and can give you references to talk to and see their finished product. A covered porch, in my opinion, is not a dyi project in some parts of the country (snow load and wind load immediately come to mind). I know a lot of people on this forum are very handy; but, this is not a deck - it will be the most prominant feature that eveyone passing your house will look at - if you put on a big porch. A professional job will really make your house stand out. A not-so-professional job will detract from anything else you do to the outside of your home. We hired a good contractor who made our project a breeze - start to finish was two weeks.
5. We had to put in a new entrance path/sidewalk. We went with the concrete pavers and rather than run the path parallel to the house (like it was), we curved the path from the front porch to our driveway. We have an 8 foot opening in front of our front door to get on and off the porch (there is only one step down to the path), and then curved the path to the driveway. Your path should be at least 42 inches wide. We used a contractor for that as well.

Hope this helps.

JDM-
Thank you so much for great tips. I'm going to look for the books you recommended and order them tonight. I did purchase 2 landscaping books for ideas and I at least know I like ornamental grasses but this porch and walkway are killing me! I think I'm just too afraid to make a mistake and be sorry later that I didn't do something else. I have no confidence in the landscaping design arena.
Thanks again for your input!

If you can post a current photo of your home, more good help will come your way.
the porch guy

Porch Guy,
Thanks-see link above. I originally went in to this project thinking I wanted to replace what's currently there and jus tbring it into proportion but now I'm so confused. I'm now even thinking a full porch that extends to the right of the house (looking at it)with big columns.
What do you think? Know of any software that I can experiment with trying on different porches?
Thanks again.

Link for pictures-1st of house, 2nd of porch I'm considering- would love other ideas.

http://s264.photobucket.com/albums/ii197/lynn2235/

Here is a link that might be useful: house/porch

Check out my album.
The Porch Guy
My Album

Wow-I love that mahogany floor and I think I just found our NEXT project...I love the screen room with knee high wall. It's beautiful. What state are you in?

I live in Northern New Jersey. Where do you live?
And thank you for the compliments.

The Porch Guy

Upstate NY