The Grand Entrance, i.e. Our New Front Porch

We swear, we're almost finished with our house remodeling projects. The latest one has been high on my wish list for a couple of years. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as high on the priority list. It was a new front porch.

We've always had a pretty lackluster entrance to the house, as far as a front path and threshold went. When we installed sod a couple years ago we haphazardly placed a few concrete pavers with the intent of putting in a "real" path shortly. There's also been an unnaturally high step from the concrete porch up to the front door, making visitors feel rather short upon arrival. We wanted to remedy that with a new porch, but a back patio, siding, etc, etc, etc, kept jumping to the top of the to-do list.

We have made many improvements to the exterior and entrance with new siding and a new front door, but the actual porch and walkway to the door weren't much to brag about. Recall the exterior of the house as of last summer (including the sad lawn, now revived):

Finally, this spring the porch became top priority. Here's the beginning of excavation on May 1, 2010:

Digging post holes for concrete footings and clearing some sod for paver path:

Gunnar grinning as he "helps" with his prized shovel (he sleeps with it, no kidding):

Here is the beginning of the paver path. A layer of gravel is beneath the special weed-blocking cloth. The whole path had to be planned around the cover for our water meter. Bummer. Adah is screeding (leveling) some sand with a 2x4 in preparation for the pavers to be laid:

Gunnar strolling on the finished path and Damon installing joists for the porch; (ooh, and notice the "manly" new solid wood beam and posts to replace the spindly, wobbly, ugly brown ones behind):

After a week walking in the front door over a piece of plywood placed across the joists and the children balancing (and frequently falling and scraping knees) on the joists, Damon spent a whole Saturday laying the decking. Then we spent a few obsessive days keeping all traffic off the porch as we took Sunday off and then there was dew and then dirt to be hosed off and we had to wait for the wood to dry so it could be finished. Whew!

Finally, on Tuesday, June 22, Maggie and Adah helped Damon finish the porch (Isn't the wood gorgeous?):

et Voila!

Final Note: Ironically there is now an unnaturally high step up to the deck from the paver path since Damon made the pavers level with that darn water meter cover and the deck level was determined by the existing concrete pad. So...we will probably be adding an additional wooden step on the path up to the porch.