Remodeling Strategies for the Porch | |
A porch is one of our favorite places in a house to improve because it's already under roof and it extends the use of the existing rooms. While its original purpose was to create a shaded reprieve from the dog days of summer, many porches were built with expansion potential for year-round use. To enclose a front porch on a lovely old Victorian would be architecturally insensitive, not to mention a bad investment that would lower its value. The side and back porches on bungalows and Dutch Colonials built after the 1930s however, are good candidates for enclosure because they were built with large-screened windows above half walls. The interior was often framed out with wainscoting and finished on the outside with exterior siding. Because of the way they were built, they offer the best potential for converting to year-round use. In most cases the location of a porch determines its use. For example, a back porch that opens off a kitchen can be sensibly worked into the floor plan to create a large eat-in kitchen with family room. It can also be converted into a home office with its own entrance to the outside. A side porch off of a living or dining room makes a convenient library or playroom to contain little kid's cumbersome playthings, which can sometimes fill up a room of their own. Checking It Out Before making any decisions about what to do with a porch, we appraise its construction and condition. We poke around underneath it with a flashlight and make a rough sketch of what's down there. The type of structure that is supporting the porch and where key footing and posts are located is important. So is the condition of the wood. We look for signs of wood rot or insect damage, which requires more extensive repair and replacement work. Getting down under can sometimes be a challenge. If there's no easy access, there's often a trap door or an opening in the siding under the porch. One time we had to remove some of the aluminum siding that covered the original wood siding to get under a side porch. (If you do this, do it carefully so you can reinstall the siding after the inspection.) Most porches were built to lighter specifications than the house they're attached to. Often that means some modifications must be made to bring the porch "up to code" or to the same standards as the rest of the house. The same requirements for an attic floor having 2x6 floor joists on 16-in. centers apply to floor joists. So when checking out a porch we look at the floor joist spacing and the spans of any main beams. But unlike an attic ceiling, it's not difficult to reinforce the floor with additional framing because it's accessible. Converting a porch to a year round room is easier if service lines for electricity and heating ducts or pipes carrying hot water to radiators or convectors are already in the vicinity of the porch, because less retrofit work is required. It's important to determine the location of these ducts and lines in the basement or crawl space adjacent to the porch before any plans are finalized. Often, we've found the existing furnace or boiler had the extra capacity to heat the porch because there was an oversized heating plant and insulation had been added. This isn't always true for the electrical system. If electric heat was going to be used or there wasn't enough openings for new circuit breakers in the main service panel, we knew we had to hire an electrician. The job usually required a new 150-amp main panel. If the existing panel had the capacity, we'd increase the number of breakers it could hold. A double circuit breaker in a single slot replaced a full sized single breaker, which was adequate for lighting and outlets. Sharing the Load After years of remodeling and doing-it-all-ourselves, today our strategy is divide and conquer. We break down the project and sub out serious stuff like pouring footings and framing out work. If the structure of the porch was questionable, we'd bring in an engineer or contractor to advise us on beefing up the foundation or pouring new cement footings. Another area where we always seek professional help is with the sheet metal work needed to extend heating or air-conditioning ducts to service a porch. Working with sheet metal requires skill and specialized tools that few of us have. We do the do the front and back end of most projects, namely demolition and preparing the site and then after the contractor has done his part, we do the finishing work. Sometimes we work right along with a contractor, which is how we handled our most recent project - rebuilding the back porch from the foundation up. It was high on our "To Do List" because walking on the rotten decking was like traversing through a mine field pock-marked with holes that went through to the ground below. Working with a carpenter, we made temporary braces to support the porch roof with doubled up 2x4s. We gutted out the decking and supporting piers and old footings which were crumbling and rotted from termites long vacated. We poured new footings and replaced the floor structure with perimeter joists and I-shaped aluminum deck brackets between the ledger and the first joist. We fastened the floor joists to the center beam with galvanized joist hangers and used 3/4-in. thick fir tung and groove deck boards. We cut out a hatch in the decking so we can access the foundation area. We repositioned one of the post pedestals so it wouldn't interfere with the screen door we plan to add when we screen in the porch. To prevent moisture from being trapped at its bottom, we used an aluminum post support on the bottom of the post to raise it off the decking. One of the first porches we enclosed was the back porch of a large farm house that spanned the back with a small door that led into the kitchen. We wanted to combine the kitchen and porch, making a kitchen family room combination, which meant we had to enlarge the back door opening, insulate the walls and floor and add electric heating registers. We also had to close in 2 windows and frame in all the walls with new wallboard. We carried a new vinyl flooring throughout the kitchen and family room. We tackled all of the demolition work and most of the framing and subbed out the drywall, heating, and floor work. We did the finish carpentry and decorating. Work We Do Ourselves Obviously, in a porch one of its walls is the exterior of the house, which we often covered with drywall to match the other three walls. But we've seen good-looking results in brick houses where the brick was left exposed as an accent wall. To cover up an exterior wall in another porch, we built a partition wall from 2x3 studs to make it thinner and conserve floor area. Another trick working in a small porch is to attach 3/4-in. furring strips to the exterior siding with construction adhesive and nails (use masonry nails if it's brick) and then glue and nail drywall or paneling to the furring strips. Trimming out the doors and windows and installing base molding is the type of carpentry that's more time-consuming than it is difficult. The key is to take it slow. We invested in a good miter box early on for these finishing jobs. Usually a porch ceiling has little or no insulation so adding it is a good idea. The easiest way we found was ripping out the old one, running new electrical wiring, and then stapling up batts. We'd have insulation blown in if there was a wooden tongue and groove ceiling that was worth saving. We'd also add insulation to the floor usually from beneath it by stapling batts in between the floor joists. If we can't tap into the existing heating system, we've found the easiest method to heat a porch area is with electric baseboard heaters because they're inexpensive and easy to install; they are, however, not cheap to operate. We try to continue the flooring from the adjoining room so there's a continuity from one room to the other. In many cases, that meant laying down an oak floor with an oak threshold to connect the two floors. Written by the editors of HouseNet Copyright HouseNet, Inc. 1995 |