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Thank you! While I like the inside of the porch, minus the raw wood supports, I do not like the outside. Let me explain.

I showed my builder a picture of the following porch. Instead, we got the porch we have.
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Here is the outside. The cream colored supports are actually wrapped in vinyl capping.

The screening is attached to the outside of the supports. Then the vinyl capping is put over it. I think you can buy it at Lowe's or HD, and it comes in different colors. Once again, this was not my choice. I wanted the pretty painted wood supports, and real wood capping. At least we did get the stained and scored concrete (which would have been done in a different color with a cream colored porch).

Last fall, my husband and I decided that the back of the house needed some more character, and my husband said that we could have the porch redone, and add a pergola over the patio. We were all set to start this spring. THEN just after Christmas, my daughter came home and announced she was getting married this fall. Because of the economy, we decided that we had better get the wedding paid for, before tackling any other expensive projects. :(

Here is the rendering of what we were going to do.
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I can understand where you're coming from. It's too bad that the builder didn't at least paint the horizontals white to match the vertical supports. I have a screened porch now and the builder made the screens with wood frames. I absolutely hate them. They are discolored and warped, and the screens come loose. I'm trying to talk my DH into something like you have. Thanks for the reply.

gracie01

The verticals are wrapped in the vinyl, not painted. When I asked why they didn't wrap the horizontals, they said they didn't think the vinyl came in the thin 2" size. Well, it did, but then they said it would tear the screen to add it. I let it go, knowing that I would one day re-do the porch.

NHB, I think I told you that is exactly the same way ours looked before a dozen storms, the last of which we decided to totally dismantle it as each time a storm came, we had to redo it. Then after a few times of going through that, we just took the roof off that part and removed the screen, used wood beams and built a pergola over the cement.

Gracie, we recently closed in our covered front porch. We live in the country on a small acreage so having the front screened it was a prefect choice thought many on this board thought we were crazy at the time we did it. We used the ScreenTight system, linked below.
I've added some pictures of when we screened in ours. You'll noticed a couple pieces of siding trim missing in these pix. They were added the following weekend. Just didn't take pix. I'm working on decorating this spring.
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Here is a link that might be useful: ScreenTight

just,

that's exactly what I'm trying to talk DH into doing. Is the wood wrapped on the inside of the porch also? Yours looks great, by the way.

gracie01

Hi Gracie. I hoped you'd see this. No the wood is not wrapped on the inside. We painted the 2x4 and 4x4 (corners) framing with deck paint first. It's very easy to do. In fact as our arms tired when installing the screening we realized we didn't have to work as hard as we were to keep the screening straight. It sort of does it itself as long as you get the top section in as straight as you can. We now plan to some day screen in our sleeping porch and maybe even our back deck. Heck we may even wind up screening the patio under the back deck too. It's that easy!
It's not that expensive either. Seems we spent around three hundred dollars or so. Granted prices may have gone up in the past year and a half, but that's still not much for adding a "room" to your home.
Here's an inside view. You can see just the edges of the black base strips. It's all very neat looking.
I'm adding the picture below I took of this years container garden so you can see how the inside looks. We'll also be adding a ballustrade and gingerbread at the tip since our home is Victorian in style.
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ScreenTight system - That's the system we have! I didn't know the name of it.

patricia43 - I do recall you telling me about your storm damage. Luckily, that hasn't happened to us.