Best Addition

I am sure we can all think of one huge project we would love to do to our homes. When Chris and I moved into our home we envisioned, well may I say I always envisioned adding a screen porch to the back of our house. We leave in the South, so Mosquito alley is a place very familiar to us in the Summer. They love to bite me!

Chris agreed it would be a great project. However, I always heard "Down the road". Well, I can tell you that we ended up doing this project WAYYYYYYYYY earlier than anticipated. My in laws built one a few years back and told us they regretted waiting so long to do so. That got me to thinking, maybe just maybe if we could afford it then we should do it sooner. Therefore, instead of traveling this year(which we had finally broke over and said we were going to Europe) we decided to build the porch instead. My top three reasons for deciding:

1- The market was good with contractors needing work (we were totally surprised that this was even going to work or be in our budget. I am glad we tried as a month later we had the best piece of our house done!)
2- Quality of life improvement (nice meals outside always a plus, being able to go outside of our house more instead of being inside ALL the time was another plus, and the cats would adore it for sure!!)
3- Add value to our home

I have to say building onto the back of our house was pretty easy. Since or house had no overhang on the back, such as the roof line coming down low, it required no additional construction or modification. They were able to tap right into the side of our house with the new roof. I will post some pictures of the back of the house so you can see.



We drove around and got ideas to see how we wanted to do the ceiling. Also, to decide if we wanted to leave the sides open or closed on the porch. In this picture, can you see how the sides are closed?? Later on you will see what we decided to do for ours.

We decided to add on a bit more of space onto our existing deck.

Our house does have a lot of windows on the back and in the morning we get a ton of sun. Building the porch was going to enclose a few of our windows. Therefore, keep that in mind when your building on an addition. Our french door with transom, one living room window, and two of our breakfast windows in the kitchen would be covered now by the porch. You can see here.

To gain more light, we decided to add skylights to the ceiling. It is nice to have the additional sunlight come into the porch. As you look up through the skylights you can see the clouds roll by:)

In this shot you can see how we decided to pitch the roof. We decided doing the roof line like this would add the illusion of more space.

Next, came deciding how we would add lighting out in the space and what type of ceiling design we would do. We ended up going with a wooden beads board ceiling. We added four outdoor recess can lights with a dimmer switch. I love being able to turn the lights down in the evening for a romantic glow. Also, kept in mind we needed an outlet for a ceiling fan. It gets hot here!

Here you can see how everything starts to take shape. It really did add a totally different appearance to the back of our house (in a good way!) It feels like an outdoor room.

Here is view from the back of our house. Our lot feels like a mountain lot, very steep! You will definitely hear and see more to come on our backyard project venture of building a backyard! Also, the addition my husband did off the screen porch.

Remember our inspiration photo above? We decided to not enclose the sides of our porch. I am a big fan of being able to have lots of natural sunlight and being able to see the favorite part of our lot, which is all the trees. We decided to leave the sides open. Look how much light you still get and my favorite par, I can still see tons of trees while sitting in here. I think it adds to the illusion of a bigger space by leaving it open.

The cats love it and so do we! I can safely say this is one project, my husband thanked me for edging us to do. He constantly, tells me "I am so glad we built this!" It by far is our favorite part of our house and we spend most of our time out there including the cats! Here are few more shots. It almost feels like an adult tree house!






What is one big project you would like to do? Or have you done a pretty big project? I would love to hear about it or for you to share! Leave a comment! Oh, and P.S. It is give away time over at Home to three Duncan Boys, therefore go over and see how you can win a free year subscription for a lovely home decor magazine!