The demolition on our porch is now complete and we’re
quickly moving into the next phase. Let’s hope the weather holds for the week
so we can get concrete poured and the masonry work can be finished, so we can
get to the fun stuff.
As we did in our renovation, we are reusing brick wherever
possible. Our hope is that we can match the brick on the front half of the
porch – basically patching in the front where the porch extends an additional
three and a half feet beyond it’s current footprint. The bricks are coming from the north end of
the porch which will be covered by new masonry shortly. The workers are
harvesting bricks from the side wherever possible so they can be reused. We
even still had a few bricks leftover from our renovation which may or may not
be used. We will likely have to do a new section of brick behind the fence
line. It shouldn’t be noticeable because there won’t be any sightlines with the
new and old brick showing in the same plane.
You may be wondering why we are extending the screen porch
only 3.5 feet. That’s the most we could do under our existing zoning and we did
not want to have to get a variance. We are going to be so close to the line
that we are required by the County to get another survey done to ensure that
our foundation does not extend too close to our neighbor’s property. Our lot is only 7000 square feet (not a bad
size for Arlington actually) so we have to maximize every inch!!
I have to say that the sun streaming into our living room is shocking. It’s amazing how much light a porch can block out and how dark it has made our living room. We hope that replacing our shed roof with a peaked roof will help more sun to shine through. The skylight should also help but will not likely make as much of an impact inside as it will on the porch.
I’m already looking for a few new pieces of porch furniture
to supplement what we already have. I really want an indoor/outdoor feeling. I'm sure the curtains are going to go back up. I'm hoping I'll be able to use the same panels and rods I had before but fortunately all of them are from Ikea and still available so if i need to add to them, it won't be a problem. Finding a table of the right dimensions may
prove the trickiest part. You can follow
my shopping process on Pinterest!