Adding a Portico

Hello there friends! I’m doing a post today that is different than my normal posts in that this post isn’t pretty. What I mean is that I don’t have a finished photo of the project because we aren’t finished with the project!

Let me explain how we got here…

This is how our house looked when we bought it. No shutters, a door that lacked character, and a few overgrown shrubs…

We like to get a feel for our houses and then decide what “style” they lean towards before we proceed with projects. In doing that, our house-style helps us to decide exactly how we interpret each improvement.

In our first home, the Misty Mountain house, we added a large rocking chair front porch to a cedar ranch. As we slowly made-over that house we focused on creating a welcoming ranch style home.

In our next home, the Willow Creek house, we felt it had elements of a farmhouse style.

To start our makeover on that house, we painted it white with a red front door and went about creating a that farmhouse vibe with every project thereafter.

Willow Creek house HERE

And now, our current home( Stone House Lane ), had a bit of a Brick Tudor vibe. So every renovation project has been done with that in mind. Several years ago, Mike made a Tudor style arched door and door surround. This was one of his biggest projects to date, not to mention that it’s our favorite project! The door added so much character to our home but there was one big issue…the door was exposed to the elements. All the rain wreaked havoc on that beautiful door, so three years ago we had an architect draw up plans for a portico to protect our door and add a little more character to the house…

Over the years, we’ve changed the plans, just a little, and last weekend we finally moved forward with our project! (remember, I warned you this post wouldn’t be pretty!)

They started by tearing out some of the existing roof lines…

Then they put up the structure that same day!

At this point, my favorite things are these gorgeous cedar beams. They’re so big and rustic and beautiful!

There will be a large landing for the beams when it’s all said and done. A tallish cedar box-type base that will be larger than the beams to keep it from looking tall and lanky!

Sooooo, like I said before, I don’t have an “after” photo yet, but here’s the progress so far…

I hope I’ll have that “after” shot of the portico very soon, but until then, thanks a bunch for hanging out with me and looking at the nuts and bolts of this project!

Sending love my friends ~ xo