Renovating Your Porch? Here Are Some Things To Consider
Your front porch can be a place for gatherings, alone time, or an opportunity to keep up with your neighborhood, depending on where you live and how you spend your leisure time. Perhaps you spend your afternoons there drinking iced tea and mingling with your neighbors. When you host parties at your house, it could serve as an additional gathering place for guests. When the weather is nice, it might also be when your children do their homework. And, you'll likely spend more time outside if your front porch overlooks a city, has views of the mountains, or is beside a body of water.
There are various porch designs, each with its own aesthetic appeal. There are open and closed porches. Others lack roofs, while some do. No matter what kind of porch it is, there are several that need some upkeep. Your porch may be aged and gray, or it may have a roof that is leaking and has missing shingles and bowed trusses. If this is the case, one thing you should consider is that a remodel is necessary.
Making improvements to your front porch for your own enjoyment is a great reason to consider a porch makeover, especially given the possibility of increasing the appeal of your property to future homebuyers. It only makes sense to make repairs if your porch is in poor shape so that it can maintain structural integrity for as long as the house to which it is linked does.
When it comes time to sell, if you reside in a location where single-family homes are being built, the new houses you'll be up against will probably have comparable outdoor living space, as new homes often all have front porches.
Focusing on other components of curb appeal, such as landscaping with well-kept grass and colorful plants that can light up the front of the house, can improve your home's curb appeal in addition to increasing its value.
Have a plan
Before anything, you should have a plan, and if you don’t or feel unsure about then it is always a good idea to get professional help and opinions from professional home renovation companies. They’ll be a great help and take things off your shoulders.
Upgrade or Add a Roof
Consider covering the porch if your front porch is more of a stoop to improve the curb appeal of your home. A roof over your current porch is practical for protecting packages in wet or icy conditions and can make retrieving your keys in the midst of a downpour more pleasant.
If your porch already has a roof over it, it definitely needs some work. Moore advises increasing the roof's overhang to make the porch more useful, possibly to the same extent as the overhang your roof has over other portions of the house. When it's raining, you can still sit on the porch and keep dry with a larger overhang.
Bring in new furniture
Upgrading your outdoor furniture is a simple, far more affordable approach to making your porch look welcoming. Consider wicker furniture, metal seating, and tables meant for outdoor spaces instead than plastic chairs or collapsible lawn chairs, which can seem out of place on a front porch. A splash of color can also be added with outdoor cushions made to resist high temperatures and occasional rain.
Hang in a Swing
Traditional seating alternatives include porch swings. Of course, installing a swing needs more labor than setting up a bench or chair outside because it is attached to the porch roof. To hang the swing's chains from the roof, eye bolts must be securely fastened into the ceiling joists.
Insert a Railing
A relatively easy porch remodel is to add a railing around the porch and down the steps to your pathway. Moore advises reducing the railing along the porch to 30 inches if local code standards don't specify a set height for the railing. This will allow you to view the railing while seated.
Conclusion
So there you have it. It can be difficult to remodel your porch, but with some effort and forethought, you can accomplish it for next to nothing. You have a nearly infinite number of alternatives when it comes to how to go about upgrading your porch, but it's up to you which one you go with.