The Making of The Porch.

Ever since our first move to the US in 1999 to beautiful absolutely gorgeous and warm and friendly Point Reyes Station in CA, I wanted a house with a porch.

You know, we all have our dreams, and that was mine. Not only a porch but some acres with some sheep and a couple of Border Collies to go with them. ;-)

That was 9 years ago, life got in the way as so often happens but I kept the dream alive and kept hoping on one of those 'one day miracles'. But recently I came to the conclusion that dreams don't automagically come true, you have to make them happen. With the recent housing burst I didn't see us move to the boonies real soon to occupy some beautiful farm house with a porch and those acres and sheep and the Border Collies. Lord knows it's hard enough to _sell_ your home now-a-days let alone buy a new one with a new mortgage.
Our neighbor's home sold after being on the market for 2 1/2 years and 70.000 less than it was valued at.

So I kept thinking about that porch and thought well, if we can't get to that house with that porch why don't we build one ourselves? And that was what we did.
It took 5 days to dry(concrete) and build and now it's DONE! And we're ecstatic about it. It worked out so well! When I look at it I can't even remember what it used to look like. It has definitely increased the curb appeal of our home. Now all we need is some nice furniture, a rocking chair and some decorations and we will be the envy of the neighborhood. All the neighbors already have come by to look at it and all approved of it, wanting to have their morning coffee with us on the porch ;-)

We found a wonderful contractor, Scott, he's a real gem, knows his stuff and knows how to customize something to what you want. I'm so happy we choose him instead aof one of those porch and deck builder companies. Scott was really happy to work on it and was proud of what he made and how he was able to think outside the box with us to find solutions for some problems. I especially like the trellis he made, it's light and airy and at the same time provides shadow that is much needed in the afternoon.
In fact we are so happy with Scott that he's going to do another project for us, the installing of some light tubes. We have some very dark area's in the house and a light tube can instantly let light in.

Here is how it looked like before we installed the porch:

Please click the images to see a larger version!

 

And here is the after photo:

Doesn't it look stunning? can you see me sitting there with a nice espresso, the dogs and my daily newspaper? Watching the world go by?
I'm so happy with it!

Below is a slide show of the making of the porch as it happened.



Tomorrow we'll be off for a few days to the Washington coast, we rented a nice top floor condo right at the beach. The beach is leash free for dogs so they're going to have a blast and so will we. Some much needed relaxation, books, music and good food!
Will take my laptop with me so I can blog and upload photos, we will not have Internet in the condo but the general clubhouse has free wifi. We will have someone staying at the house watching the evil pixie catz and taking care of business.

We'll be at Westport Beach Escapes.(click)

Isn't it beautiful? ;-) Sleep with windows open to hear and smell the surf, aahhhhhh, wonderful!

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