no more porch!

I was going to wait until the backyard was completely done to show pictures, but I’m worried that we’re not going to be able to finish it anytime soon because of a lack of money. So I’ll go ahead and put up the pictures now, and do a big before/after post later. :-)

Backyard
The side of our house, with the porch gone!

Foundation issues exposed
Removing the structure revealed some of the foundation issues we’re having.

Where the porch was
What the back of our house looks like now. You can see the cement stoop that was originally there.

Where the porch was
We would like to make this into a nice little patio area, by using patio stones and/or gravel. We’d like to have a place for a table and chairs and also a grill. I’m even thinking of that marking off the area with some sort of pergola and lighting would be really nice!

Underneath the deck we found some containers that were full of water. Once we got rid of them, the mosquito problem was a lot less. However, it’s not completely gone. We are also having a wasp problem – we found 3 nests in the roof of the sunporch, so they are flying around trying to find new a nest. This makes it still hard to be outside.

I’m also unsure about what to do with the fence. Ideally, I’d love to take down that section and put a new one in that follows the property line. I did some research, and it seems that with chain-link, just “moving” it over a few feet is not easy at all. Some of the research I’ve done says that it’s very worth it hiring a professional, versus DYI. Hmm, more money. Not sure.

Paul thinks we should just leave as is. I am thinking of squatter’s rights laws, and I think that it’s important to have a fence on the boundaries of your property – for both you and your neighbor, and also for future owners of either house. If it was just crooked, I wouldn’t worry about it, but the whole jutting in thing makes a different in my opinion. Maybe we could just replace that section of the fence, though that might not be an option. Still thinking about it.

Next up (as much as we have money…):
1) Fix house foundation
2) Replace insulation in crawlspace
3) Grade & sod backyard

One thought on “no more porch!

  1. Josh worked ALL SUMMER on getting our DIY fence up, so, yeah, it’s not easy, and it’s time-consuming- but he was doing a big part of the yard, not just moving one section. And it was a wood picket fence, not chain link.

    Next summer’s project at our house is going to be putting in a patio (hopefully) because the flower garden is bigger than I can handle. The idea of the project is overwhelming for me, though!

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