scdeb424,

You've probably asked one of the toughter questions for this forum, since it is so subjective. Your house sounds similar to ours and we put a covered front porch on 3 years ago. About the best I can do is tell you what we went through with our porch project.

1. First, do you want something that is more decorative than functional? Our decision on this was easy, since we wanted a functional porch - we don't have a deck out back of our house. From the few references we read, a functional porch should be at least 8 feet wide to accommodate furniture and not feel crowded when people are on it. I would have liked a 10 feet wide porch, but our lot was too small to make that look proportional to the rest of the house. (Maybe all you want is a covered entranceway that utilizes your existing stoop).

2. Next, we did not find all that much in books and magazines on the type of front porch we wanted, with the exception of this web site: http://www.vintagewoodworks.com/. There is a picture section with a couple of hundred pictures of porches that might give you some idea. So, what we did is start looking at houses around us that did have porches as we were out doing everyday driving - what did we like, not like, think we could incorporate into our design, and so forth. Once we started looking for porches, we were surprized how many there are out there. We did not find the "exact" porch that we wanted, but we did find a number with features we did like, so we could tell our contractor what we did want.

3. If you do decide on a "big" front porch, then the landscaping around it becomes almost as important (at least I thought so). I found a book in our local library that had a section on landscaping around front porches. We ended up incorporating some of the ideas from that section into our final project.

4. For us, landscaping also included putting in a new sidewalk - since our contractor had to tear out the old one. We incorporated the new sidewalk into the porch/landscape final look so that it all blended together nicely.

5. Use a good contractor experienced in front porch construction. Our contractor said he really wanted to do our front porch because this type of project really showed off his work. Most rear decks are so far removed from the road that it is just about impossible to show potential clients his usual work without getting permission from the owner to come onto their property. A front porch though, all he has to do is tell people to drive by. In addition, there are a lot of finishing details that a good contractor can suggest. For example, we were not sure what we wanted for the ceiling. Our contractor actually "surprised" us and used tongue-and-groove knotty cedar. The look is pretty stunning, and we get a lot of complements on it.

Good luck with your project.

jdm 56:
Hey thanks for responding to my questions. You hit the nail on the head, so to speak! Your very thoughtful reply gave me just what I needed to think about before we undertake this project. You even told me 3 things I hadn't thought of--landscaping, the sidewalk (ours is rather ugly cement), and most important the size of the porch. I am going to investigate the web sites you mentioned and hopefully we can get started on getting some curb appeal to a rather plain house.
Thanks again--now I'm excited more than scared!