I, too, am porchless altho' I have a covered breezeway between the house and garage that has served as one for generations. It's also my winter sowing pot ghetto December-April. This time of year there are several folding tables and other miscellaneous raised surfaces to hold all my winter sown sprouts--either in pots or still in their milk jug bottoms--while they get some size to them before being planted out. Once their number goes down as the season progresses, there's room for a couple of lawn chairs where I can sit, relax and rest a spell from garden chores, or take cover from summer storms. The breezeway is exactly that too--it runs east/west so there's nearly always a breath of air moving through it. The birds fly through it on their way from the bird feeders that hang in the crabapple tree out front to the trees down at the back of the property. The chipmunks zip through it as well, chasing each other or carrying seeds from the bird feeders to stash in their burrows off the back side of it.

You'll have to fill in the windows and vapor proof the whole area. That's gonna involve quite a bit of deconstruction and reconstruction. Cheaper if you are on crawlspace and can easily match the exterior siding than if you are on slab and can't match the siding, but not inexpensive in either case. Takes the average bath remodel cost of 16K to about double. Talk to some local contractors.

They didn't want to backfill the porch so they made storage under there. I've seen some places with the same thing use to store firewood to keep it dry or anything else they need to store for quick access. The floor under there is probably a rat slab a few inches thick if that.

"I can't be bothered to go out and scout out examples for photos of ivy doing just as floral described ..." Unfortunately, without evidence, I can't feel compelled to believe your and Floral's claims. If it were true what you both say, then the physical proof should be available within ten seconds of entering the "ivy infested woodlands" that surround you, GG. The personal assurance of an ivy hater, such as yourself (and possibly Floral) might not be based on pure, objective fact. Ivy haters tend to not grow ivy or study the nuances of its habits. Instead, figuratively speaking they run from and throw rocks at it. "But it requires far more maintenance than any other groundcover I can think of ..." I know you wouldn't want to think this, but is it possible that with this particular plant, you are not managing it in the best way? I've heard this claim before -- where I lived and where I had ivy and where it grew with seemingly unbridled energy -- and found it to be baseless. In fact, when I managed ivy, I credited it for being not only the most dependable groundcover that would accept almost any and all conditions, but for being the biggest landscape time and work-saver ever!. The two half-acre properties in Atlanta I owned personally were each covered in 1/4 acre of ivy. Not even mulch -- which would need annual top dressing -- could have been easier or cheaper. I guess if one was set on hating it and their perpetual goal was to get rid of it, then having ivy around would seem like the cause of an endless struggle. But for those of us who consider how we can put this durable, disease-free, evergreen plant to work solving everyday landscape problems, find that barely any other plant is as versatile and dependable. "And if you skip the maintenance for any length of time or if you inherit a garden where the ivy is already established but has not been properly maintained, then all bets are off!" Interestingly enough, that was my initial introduction to it and ultimately, what caused me to come to love it. I bought my first property in Atlanta ... a neglected house and yard that was borderline abandoned. It was owned and previously rented out to faculty by Agnes Scott college. But their plans had changed and it had sat dormant for period of years. Ivy was literally everywhere in the neighborhood, which was primarily wooded. The yard was large oak trees, about a billion saplings, and chest-high weeds everywhere. In the house-half of the yard, ivy was front and center, In exploration of the wooded and weedy half, ivy seemed to underlie everything. I wondered if I could get rid of the weeds and keep the ivy (I needed to have something nice looking covering the ground.) It turned out that I could spray the weeds and their existence protected the ivy from a direct hit of herbicide. In about a year's time, I had what would have cost several thousand dollars, had I had to install it, of ivy. I also had ivy running amok on the house but it was not difficult to kill with herbicide and be done with it. I decided I didn't want ivy growing up the large trees and severed it all at the base of each tree, except for one which was a special project. That chore on a quarter acre of tree took probably took no more than 2 or three hours. It was much more time consuming to cut and remove the billion weedy saplings. It was a relatively short time for all the dead ivy leaves to fall off, making it much less visible. Within two or three months, all the ivy stems were falling off of the trees. All I had to do was walk around and pick it up, as a one-time thing. I won't go deeper here into how bad IT WASN'T, to convert a complete weed infested eyesore into a handsome, groundcovered landscape, thanks to ivy, but I have its general maintenance factors pretty well discussed in another thread devoted exclusively to that subject ...[Managing Hedera Helix[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/managing-hedera-helix-english-ivy-dsvw-vd~5352716?n=16)