Which side of the house should we put a porch on
jenocurley
14 years ago
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john_hyatt
14 years agoRelated Discussions
Which side to put a bench?
Comments (6)If you use the bench for every meal and there are 3 people using it, then access is paramount. But perhaps you only use the bench when you have guests? I would put it against the window inside, for staging and for daily use - moving it out when you anticipate using it for 3 people. Outside, I could go either way, thinking people would prefer to sit in the chairs over the bench and would prefer to look out instead of at the house. So I'd put the chairs against the house, if that's true. Or T-bone the table if there is room, with the bench against the house (it would be on the short side of the table, for one or 2 guests) which would put only 1 chair facing the house and 2 chairs on either side of the table....See MoreCan we/should we have our house two different colors?
Comments (4)Maybe just prime and paint the barn the neutral white like on the yellow house trim. Match the shutter color and then when you decide and have the budget you can move forward with the entire change....See Morewhat type of porch/deck should we do on this end of the house!
Comments (5)That close to the ground, a concrete porch floor would be a much better choice than a deck. Once you create a form, you may need to fill in the center so you don't end up needing to pour a foot thick slab. You want porch floor a minimum of 6' deep x 10' wide x 4" thick. You want to be able to set a bench on the porch and still have room to easily walk past it. For the roof for a porch only, you want the roof to be below the existing roof. For your porch roof, add a forward facing gable just beneath the existing roof with the peak of the center ridge centered over the door. Use the same roof slope as the slope on the right side of the existing roof, then mirror that same roof slope down the other way on the left side. Since this isn't the actual "front" door, seriously consider including a double drive thru car shelter as well as a porch. To do that, extend the existing roof (or add your roof beneath the existing roof) with the same slope as the existing roof 36' -- as if adding a three car carport -- posts spaced accordingly. Include a couple of skylights in the roof over the section adjacent to the house as this section will serve as your side entry porch. Create a form to pour a concrete slab beneath the first section, the top of the slab to be only one step down from the door. You can fill in much of the center part of that form with gravel when you have gravel poured for your driveway ... that way the actual thickness of the concrete porch floor can be only several inches thick rather than a foot or more. You might consider screening in that porch between house and car shelters....See MoreWhere should we put the stairs off our back porch?
Comments (35)@Beverly @WestCoast Hopeful Oh my goodness, I love this porch idea SO much. It takes the porch and yard from two separate spaces to one big, friendly space. Our builder will 100% NOT do this for us, so we'd have to do it afterwards on our dime, but I love this transformative idea! We probably wouldn't lay concrete across the whole back, but maybe a smaller area with a gazebo or something. I stopped by the house this afternoon and walked around at ground level behind the house. (I haven't done this too much because we've had a lot of rain the last few months and it's super muddy.) When I was down there, I learned a few interesting things: First, the area that I thought was most usable -- directly below the porch -- is actually not the most usable. It has more of a slope than I thought. You can see it better here: It's still going to be useful, but the largest level part of the yard is in the corner where I was standing when I took this photo. Conveniently, this is also the area where the level part goes deepest towards the back of the lot, so it gives us the biggest usable level space. This slope right below the porch means that the big wide centered steps that @Beverly suggested would have to go out significantly further to actually reach the ground. It would probably consume most of the usable space below the porch. But that's more acceptable now that I know that the corner is the prime real estate in the yard. Here's another photo that might show the slope better: The other thing I learned is that the left side of the porch is actually not as high as it looked from above. Standing on the ground, the porch is slightly above my eye level, or about 5.5' up. And since the land keeps rising to the left, stairs going along the house would only have to cover about 5' vertically. We looked at the other stairs from our same builder and estimated that they're about 40 degrees from the horizontal. So one trig calculator later, and it looks like the stairs probably won't even come to the guest room window! So I think we'll go with the left stairs for now and then look into a set of fancy wide porch steps down the line. Thanks, everybody, for all your thoughts and suggestions! I'm really happy with the left stairs for now and the awesome stairs later....See Morejenocurley
14 years agocyndo
14 years agosunnyflies
13 years agostu2900
13 years ago
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