RIP, Sun Porch

I think it's safe to say that most people would love to have a sun porch, especially one that faces large evergreens and a gorgeous stream.  On warm, sunny mornings you could sip your coffee while reading the paper on the porch with the sounds of the water and birds in the background.  Sounds peaceful and lovely, no?

Our new house had such a sun porch.  Had being the operative word.

The porch can be seen in the photo above, behind the horrible snow mound.

And here is a better look at it.  (Overlook the ladder.)  It had floor to ceiling screens all the way around and could be accessed from the garage, the family room, and the outside.  Under the porch was an air conditioning unit and a place to tuck away a lawn mower or whatever else you would want to store there. 

 There was also a metal railing along the top of the porch on the roof.  When we first looked at the house we though the railing meant we could use the rooftop as outdoor living space as well, but it turned out that the railing was purely decorative.

Anyway, while the idea of a nice, big sun porch was indeed lovely, Cory and I knew this one had to go.  It was quite old and when standing inside you could feel the floor sloping towards the stream.  It just didn't feel sturdy and safe.

I never got a photo of the inside as it was before, but here is what it looked like full of wood flooring that we tore out of the house.

And this is the view of the stream.  This view almost makes me sad the porch is gone. Then I remember that we'll still have that view but in a much more useful space.

But the biggest reason we had to say goodbye to the porch is because our master suite addition needed to be accessed via that space.

Try to follow me for a moment.  The area that WAS the sun porch is about to become a mudroom / laundry room and hallway to our master bedroom, which will be added beside that section of the house.  Does that make sense?  We really need to have a downstairs master and this was the only place we could put it because of where the stream runs on the property.

If we had paid professionals to demo this porch we would have forked over about $3,000.  Yep.  Three. Thousand.  Dollars.  Seems pricey, right?  Since we did ALL the demo in the house ourselves, we couldn't bring ourselves to spend that kind of cash on something we knew we could tackle.  The problem was, we needed more manpower.  Cory couldn't do this himself, and my 5'2" self can only handle so much "manly" labor.

Once again, our family was awesome and totally stepped in to get this job done.  I popped into the house one afternoon and saw this:

That's Cory's dad and another guy from the farm on the roof of the porch.  They had already removed the metal railing and layer upon layer of roofing material and tar.

I have to insert a tidbit about Cory's dad here.  He is a dairy farmer and perhaps works more hours than any human I've ever met.  "Free time" is hard to come by for him.  So for him to take the time away from his own work and come to our house and do all of this for us was amazing.  It was totally selfless and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it - how much I appreciate him.

Anyway, it took these two guys three or four trips to the house to get the entire porch down.  They did it step by step, top to bottom.  Cory and I didn't have to do a thing.  And it turned out that the areas where the porch were attached to the house were rotten.  There was a lot of wood damage and even big spaces where mice and squirrels were able to get inside.  I think it was a darn good thing we took the porch down before it fell down.

Before we knew it, the porch was gone.  Well, it was no longer intact.  All the materials were piled on our driveway and grass so we could sort out the metal to take to a scrapyard.

The house has officially undergone a porch amputation!

The doors were boarded so no one would try to walk through them and then we had to work on getting rid of the last bit of "stuff" on the ground.  The kids actually took apart the brick tower that supported the middle of the porch.  Cory showed them how to break apart the bricks, then they put them in their red wagon and took them to the front of the house and built a little "house" of their own.  It was pretty cute.

RIP, sun porch.  I'm sure many celebrations took place within your walls and many peaceful moments were enjoyed there as well.  We're excited to give the space a new purpose, a new life, and a totally new style.  It's going to be pretty awesome.