Our current front porch
We bought our first house in 1967 for a whopping $11,500. That got us three bedrooms, a bathroom the size of most bedrooms, a minimalist kitchen, and an enclosed front porch. The porch was paneled with knotty pine paneling and had windows on three sides.
My husband was taking a load to the town dump one day, and someone had just brought in a wicker hideabed. Butch paid the dump overseer $1 for it and brought it home. I spray painted it and recovered the cushions. Since the $11.5K did not bring us central air conditioning, many hot nights our family slept on that hideabed. We also had lots of social gatherings on that porch, especially after fast pitch softball games.
Our next house did not include a porch and we sorely missed it. A couple of years after we moved there, we added a deck on the back and couple of years after that, screened in that deck.
We lived on that porch from April until October. The house had hot water heat so the cost of installing AC was prohibitive. We just moved to the porch. It was furnished with used pieces and hand-me-downs. Fresh paint and cushion covers sort of tied it together. We ate every meal out there, played games, read, and napped--all approved porch activities.
Next we built a house in the country that included a large deck and screened porch. When we were getting estimates from builders, one suggested we could cut costs by leaving the porch and deck off. We said we could leave the house off but we needed the porch and deck. Studies show that spending even a short time outdoors relieves stress and all kinds of ills. Maybe on a porch you are only halfway outdoors but to me the results are the same.
About ten years ago, we bought a one floor bungalow to flip. It not only had a great enclosed front porch complete with a wicker swing, but also what was known as a sleeping porch off one of the bedrooms in the back. I had a lot of fun decorating that porch and added some stenciling around the top conveying why I love porches.
Which brings us to our present home. It is a 1910 Craftsman and came with an enclosed front porch and a large deck on the back. The deck was added by the previous owners and is huge. We spend quite a bit of time out there but then there's the bugs.
The porch is not heated and I generally clean it up good in the fall but decorate it for Christmas and if we have overflow from Christmas dinner (like the grandchildren) a space heater makes it usable.
After Christmas, it sits unused for about three months. Late March or early April, I wash all of the windows, remove the spider webs, and generally make it ready for summer. It's actually one of my favorite cleaning jobs--if such a thing exists-- because it's a sign of spring. This year, circumstances prevented me from this task until this last week. But as usual, it was a huge boost to my spirits, Opening all eight windows is breath of fresh air, not just to the body, but also the soul. All of the green out of every window brings renewal. I think there should be a law that all homes have to have a porch.
Our current back deck.
RSS Feed