Covered Porch Renovation Begins!

Apologies for the radio silence this week. I've been making trips to Home Depot, working away on the vintage shop, and helping with the big BBQ and school play in town. But I'm back and sharing some "before" shots of the downstairs porch we are planning to rehab over the next 3 months. It's an eyesore and needs some serious help. I cringe just looking at these photos.

As you can see, the space has potential but it is incredibly rough to say the least. We have bare concrete floors, window openings but no windows, a chain link gate door, and plywood walls. Currently the space is being used to store construction supplies, but the plan is to spruce it up significantly and add a door between the porch and the downstairs chiropractic office space so that patients can enter directly from downstairs instead of walking through our living room. Here's our To Do list for the space:

> Add insulated door to the chiropractic treatment room
> Frame out and install windows
> Sand, prime, and paint wood doors for the two entries into the covered porch area
> Add steps and railing leading up to the porch
> Install flooring (we are still undecided on what material to use)
> Add wood plank walls and paint them white
> Add a facade on the foundation around the front of the house (stone?)
> Landscaping around the front of the porch
> Spread blue stone gravel in front of the porch so patients can drive right up to it

Once again, our To Do list feels overwhelming, but we do have a good start on a number of the items already. Our new full window insulated door (pictured below) arrived earlier this week, and I think it's going to be really nice as an entry door and for adding light to the office space.

We've also have a full set of windows that will be used in the window openings. Framing out and installing them will be the largest job on the porch. We found two wood doors with full glass window inserts at the Brimfield flea market last summer that we will sand, prime, paint, and install as entry doors into the covered porch area. One will replace the chain link gate door shown below, and the other will lead out of the back of the porch area (the opening behind the yellow concrete footing tube).

What to do on the floor is still up in the air. We need something that will work for the porch floor but that will flow with whatever we end up doing on the bare concrete foundation in front of the house and the stairs we are going to add. Anyone have ideas for this eyesore?

We've been procrastinating work on the covered porch because the job is daunting, but it's time to get down to business. I am hoping we can start framing the windows over the coming week. My job is to scrape, sand, and paint all of the windows and doors that will go in. It's lots of work, but peanuts compared to the framing and installing Josh will do. As usual I will share pics as we make progress!

Oh, and if anyone has been wondering, we are so close to finishing the bathroom! The shower glass wall and door is scheduled to be installed within the week, and after that we just have a few small things like hanging the bathroom door, installing light switch plates, paint touch ups, hanging a wall cabinet, and adding a threshold between the concrete and the tile. I've been holding out photos so that I can show a finished product for once. I also need to figure out how to get nice photos in a room with no natural light. Is there any way to do this without splurging on expensive photography lights on tripods and umbrellas?

That's all for today! We're off to serve 500 BBQ chicken lunches at the town parade/BBQ.