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Yesterday, I remembered that I still need to put one more coat of stain/sealer on the front porch before our winter weather gets here. Here in central Texas, if we’re going to get winter weather, it usually doesn’t hit us until January. Sometimes February. Every now and then, we don’t get a winter at all. 😀 That’s Texas for you.
But as I was assessing the staining/sealing job that needs to be done ASAP, I began to remember all of the plans that I had considered for our front porch and the front exterior of our house soon after we bought the house. I couldn’t remember all of the details, so I got on my blog and took a little trip down memory lane. Then I decided this needs to be a group trip. 😀
At the time we bought our house, the front exterior was not pretty. It needed so much work, but I could see the potential.
I had huge plans for the front of our house. I wanted to do a full on remodel of the front porch area, including a possible change in the roofline, extending the porch, and so much more. In August 2014, one year after we bought the house, I did a few mockups of what our house could potentially look like with a big front porch remodel.
The first idea was to just extend the section of the front porch where the front door is, and add a gable above the front door.
Another idea I had, which was my favorite idea, was to extend the entire front porch, adding a porch area in front of the guest bedroom window, and adding a gable roof over the entire front porch.
After sharing my own ideas, I had a reader (who was a retired architect) send me these ideas. You can see that this is when I was planning on incorporating Matt’s wheelchair ramp into the front of the house. (We ended up adding the ramp in the back when we had the carport built.) And this was long before we decided to turn the garage into my studio.
She sent me two different designs, and this one was my favorite by a long shot. I loved this idea so much, and I still do!
But somewhere along the way, my priority of completely remodeling the front porch area continued to be moved lower and lower on the list of priorities. And today, I don’t really ever give this idea a thought anymore. I mean, every once in a while I may long for a larger front porch and think back to these plans, but it’s not something that I put a priority on at all. Our back addition is a priority. Getting our back yard usable for entertaining guests is a priority. But overall, I’m pretty happy with our front porch.
It took a lot of work to get from this…
…to this…
And while I do have those few projects that need to be finished up (like the faux stone porch skirting, and fixing my string lights that fell), I love driving up to our house a seeing our cute front porch with the warm wood, the wide and welcoming front steps, and the coral front door. I would call it quaint. At one time, I thought I wanted something grand. But after ten years in this house, I really love the quaint look. And at this point, I think I even prefer the quaint look over something grand.
Even if we had the opportunity to do a big front porch remodel right now, I don’t think I would do it. This is one of those situations where my priorities drastically changed, and I’ve come to love what I have.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
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