Porch Progress

I have posted before that I have an older house that's slowly being renovated. We are finally working on the porch! We have lived here for three years, and I bought this darling house, knowing that I would tear down the dismal room that served as a porch and open it up into a real, live, southern-style front porch! So.....here's what it looked like before:

I mean, it's OK, but it just isn't my dream house, you know? I love porches. I even have a book about porches. I dream of sitting on my porch with a mug of hot cider on a cold night with a blanket and a book. I dream of hanging patriotic bunting from my porch rail in the summertime. I dream of having a hammock even - but this may be far-reaching.
At any rate, I have spent hours and hours with graph paper and issues of magazines like Country Living, Country Home, Cottage Style and Bungalow Style dreaming, designing and planning. And finally, my day has come. My porch is now under construction. Here's what it looked like after the first day - Demolition Day:


That's my sweet hubby on the left, surveying the damage. We paid somebody else to do it so he wouldn't have to. And that's my friend that I'm paying to do the porch on the right.

So, here's what the porch looked like yesterday with my fat craftsman-esque columns basically constructed:

Anyway, I suppose there is a universal appeal to a front-porch lifestyle. I'm expecting that having a front porch will be life-changing. Well, maybe not expecting, but hoping. Well, maybe not life-changing, but life-slowing. Not that it will reduce the number of ballet practices or after-school clubs my kids are involved in, and not that it will turn off the noise of modern family life, but I guess that I hope I will hear it calling my name in the middle of my life, and that the call will lure me outside to have a cup of tea, and for five mintues now and again, make me feel like my life has slowed down. I guess that's kind of how dreams are - they're things you shoot for even if you never get that far.

So, now that the silly dreams of my own mind are out there in public, I'll bid you farewell. More updates will come - there are lots of beautiful details being added to my columns today, front steps are being poured out of concrete, and railings will be added between the columns. And when that's done - PAINT!! Yahoo!!

DAILY BLISS: Chocolate chip cookies, fresh from the oven, made with my kids' help!

- Christy