Well, I made a Garden Room, that was screened in, and had windows around the bottom. It also had a day bed, and was a nice place to nap.. actually it had almost a full kitchen lol. Search Garden Room in this forum and maybe you can find it. I don't know how to link stuff. I used a regular metal carport for the frame and ebay, craigslist, TS windows. Alas, it is no more, but everything will be recycled soon into our screened porch. Hope it goes well. I sure miss mine.

I have an old Victorian in MA, around 140 years old. I finally had to replace the front porch decking last summer. As best as I could tell, we removed the original mahogany decking. If not original, it was at least 30 years old as my neighbor has lived there for 30+ years and has never seen the porch replaced. The frames of the deck were actually attached from inside the house and the vertical porch supports were old wood stumps. It had to be replaced because 2 of those stumps had rotted and one of the 2"x6" (real 2x6) had split. The rear porch of the house still has the old wood that is very sturdy still. The only downer I put on it is the fact the mahogany has greyed severly, but I'm going to be looking to fix that this summer. As far as wear, it has help up nice. (Then again, this house has the original wood gutters still in fine shape). To the question, When I replaced the porch decking, I replaced it with tongue and groove Mahogany, 5/4". So far it has held up well. I'm sure the composite would hold up and require less maintenance, but I (and more importantly my wife) hate the look of composite. The porch is covered, but not enclosed so I'm have yearly maintenance on it. It is our front porch and gets a fair amount of traffic and wind blown weather. The stairs are actually fully exposed and the original wood decking was in excellent shape when removed. The stairs were only replaced due to the lack of any concrete footings so the wood rotted from underneath.

Consumer Reports: For certain items, their advice is good (things like digital cameras, cordless phones, some appliances, etc.). The advice seems unbiased and reliability data is gathered from consumers. But for things like cars, I believe the editors have a strong bias against US manufacturers and the "scores" in their ratings include subjective categories like how the car feels and its styling---things that don't mean a hill of beans. Somehow, someway, an imported car (typically Japanese) will always "perform" the best in their tests, even if objective data like 1/4 mile times and braking distance is better on the domestic. The overall score ends up lagging if the GM product is "long in the tooth" or has "shiney plastic on the interior trim" or other nonsense. Honda somehow does everything perfectly as far as CR is concerned. It cracks me up to read their ratings of wine and ice cream---things that they have no business rating since it's all a matter of personal taste. Then for something like a mattress---part of it is comfort but part is price and how well it's made---they seem to have no opinion at all. Decking? Well, I think they pretty much admit that they don't know it all. I evaluated a bunch of them for a deck and screened porch I'm having built. For a variety of reasons, I wanted composite on the deck portion instead of wood (wood in the porch). In the end, I settled on Fiberon Professional Series with the slots to accommodate hidden fasteners. The contractor I hired seems most comfortable with this particular material as he has specified it many times before and seems to have satisfied customers. I liked the darker brown color enough to go with it. I tested it against the Fiberon "Tropics" which looks nicer to me, but I didn't like how easliy "Tropics" scratched. Pro Series took harder keying before showing gauges. Also, he gave me a better price on Pro Series. One material I liked is Pro Cell which I guess now is called Azek Deck. It's lighter weight and I think all plastic with no wood fill. The colors were a little light in shade---like pastel---but the material was nice looking, like painted wood. Evergrain was nice, but not reversible. I heard good things about Geo Deck, but didn't like the look as much as the Fiberon, and it didn't feel as substantial. I might regret not picking the Azek Deck because over the long haul, it probably ages better than the Fiberon, but I do think the Fiberon is a good product in its own right. "Veranda" is made by Fiberon and appears to be the same product but with the HD label on it. Fiberon is 2nd to Trex in Sales, but has not had nearly as many issues reported as Trex has.

We don't have one like that attached to the house. We have the old metal ones. However, We have had one kind or another of RV for the last 15 years. They have the same type you are looking at. On the camper we just traded in, the awning was 11 years old. The camper was exposed to the weather year round. Most of that time, the awning was rolled up, as the camper was not in use, except in the summer, mostly weekends. It lasted us up until the last storm came up real fast. We had been watching for it, as we had driven thru several on the trip. We put it down long enough to eat supper, with my Dad and DH watching the weather all around us, walking around with their plates. DH went in to start putting food away while we finished what was on our plates. On large gust of wind, and that sucker ripped right at the top! The frame falling to the ground. Just missed my Mom. Within two weeks, we had the new one, which we installed ourselves. The fabric was by carefree of colorado. Some kind of vinal. We were very pleased with it. With all the exposure it had had, we hadn't expected it to last that long. Hopefully, the one on the new motor home will last as long! Just remember to NOT leave it up full time. When you are going away, make sure it is rolled up. If it looks like it's going to rain hard, roll it up, if the wind is going to blow, tie it down (special tie downs), but if it's going to blow hard or storm, roll it up. A cousin in CA has a Sunsetter and love it. It is an older one, and no motor. Tami