Porch demolition, yeah!

This post is dedicated to my dear old dad on Father's Day! Without him, I'm sure we'd never have the desire or confidence (skill development is still in progress) to tackle such a lifelong project. His help and enthusiasm for true craftsmanship has gotten us so much further than we ever could have gotten ourselves.  Hopefully he can come over soon and enjoy our improved front porch.  

I've often said that our porch looks like someone parked an RV from the 1970s in front of our house.  I mean, OMG, those windows!  

The ones that are open are the ones that are not broken.

Gabe's mom told us once that they were salvaged from Martha's Restaurant, which was a popular place in Bethel back in the day.  I wonder why they would want to get rid of these beauties?

 Luckily, the original posts were still in there, encased in clapboards. Could be worse, I guess.

It got worse inside.  Meet our old friend, Painted Particle Board.

Because we're still suffering from an overabundance of stuff, and because the porch is generally unpleasant, it  more often served as storage during our various other projects than being the nice summer hang-out spot it should be.  So this is what it looked like on a good day:

Add all that up with fungus growing on both the floor and the ceiling and you can see how we were ready for change.  

The floor was covered in a mysterious substance that turned to mush when it got wet, which was all the time, because the roof leaks in several places.  By the time I ripped it up, it was literally growing mushrooms.  You should be thanking your lucky stars that I couldn't find the camera before I eliminated that.  It turns out the mystery substance was just an underlayment that never got its overlayment, and was definitely never meant to get wet.  

1982 was a rough year for porch renovations.

So I pulled up the floor first.  The craziest part about the whole underlayment fiasco was that the floor underneath wasn't half bad!  A few patches and a new coat of paint and they would have been in business.

1982 "under"layment on left, halfway decent wood floor exposed on right.  

We knew we'd be in for a big project, but like the rest of our house, there were strong bones and much potential under all those layers of yuck.  The posts and trim work around the door and windows were in great shape.

Gabe got a head start on wiring when we worked in the ceilings of the wall on the interior of this wall.  So yay for that.

When I was out for the day on Saturday, Gabe went nuts on the walls.  Since he can't use a Sawzall and take self-portraits at the same time, he didn't get any awesome demolition shots.  But it was pretty sweet for me to come home to this!

Woohoo!  I bet the neighbors didn't even know we had those windows.  

And look, we have a decent-looking front door. Bet you didn't know that either!

Perhaps the greatest part about this is that it forced us to clean off our porch, forever, because we have nothing to hide our clutter anymore.  The attic is a little more stuffed but it feels so good to have another whole space empty!

I really underestimated the difference this would make - the living and dining rooms have so much more afternoon light.  I will have to see if I can find some pictures that will help demonstrate the difference.  We feel so much more exposed, but in a good way.  And the smell is much better without the mushroom colony growing out of the floor.

Of course, it's not all fun and games.  You also definitely notice the peeling paint, which is the worst in the areas where the porch roof deflects the rain...

...and there's a lot of caulk and gunk where the panels between the posts were affixed.  We have a lot of scraping in our future.

Overall, it could be a heck of a lot worse.  It doesn't feel unsafe or anything.  The roof could get interesting, and it might need to be jacked up a couple of inches.  But hey, anything that gets us closer to hanging up that porch swing we got for our wedding nearly two years ago (that's still in the box) is a good thing, right?  We're forward thinkers.