BFD Reveal:The Before and After of an Icky No More Urban Toronto Porch

This is what our porch used to look like on our house. It was ok.. Certainly not the ugliest one in the hood, but there were issues. Like that lattice on the under part behind the Boxwoods (this is an old picture, they’ve grown since this was taken a few years ago). The paint on the steps had completely peeled off. And on the far right corner beside the brick post, the floor was a little bouncy. So bouncy that if someone REALLY wanted to, they could probably go right through it. Which would be funny, but also, there’d be a hole in the porch, which sucks.

The Porch BEFORE the Porch

One Friday afternoon Keith decided to just take off the railing parts… But when he started chipping away, he realized there was actually some ok looking wood underneath, which wasn’t used and covered instead for no good reason. As is the theme with most of the aesthetic ‘choices’ made before our time in our house.

Oh hello railing, sorry we didn’t get a chance to spend any time together

At least both sides of the family got to see each other before…

This. 

Already, a lot better, don’t you think?

But Keith couldn’t stop here, which is what I thought he was going to do….

Oops! Those extra planks just sort of fell right off….

So this is what I was greeted with when I got home after work. NO MORE FRONT DOOR ENTERING OF HOUSE FOR YOU! Good news: the joists underneath were totally fine, so we only had to replace the cosmetic wood, which saved us at least $1k. And a lot of pain.

Didn’t have to wait long before new planks started being added in though… Like literally the next day

All new cedar 1×6’s. It smelled SO GOOD. Thanks Home Depot! (not because they sponsored this post cause they didn’t — we still had to pay for the wood, but that’s where we got it from, FYI)

And we have stairs!

Which smelt as eqaully cedar awesome as the deck.

And this was the finished product after weekend 1. Not bad right???

Then it was time for the railing. Origianlly we thought it was going to be wood, but then Keith came across a 100% FREE piece of tempered glass (ex window from what we understand) that someone was giving away from their renovation site on Kijiji. Yes, that’s right. A 10’x4′ piece of perfectly intact glass. For free.

But the posts, which were brown pressure treated 6x6s — not cedar, cause those are special order, and way expensive –had to go in first. This was week 2.

 

And by week 3, that glass went in! Not bad eh? We had to pay $100 for delivery, and it took 2 men to move, but that glass, once braced by metal brackets, was not going NOWHERE

Also had to build a cedar side railing thing cause you know, falling off the side of the porch, which is again, hilarious, also hurts when it’s from 8 feet off the ground. Apparently.

We ended up getting some of the horizontal wood in that we wanted orginally before the glass miracle happened

And TA DAH!!!! The finished product. Not bad for 3 weekend worth of work and $2k worth of cedar and pressure treated wood, right?

 

3 weeks. And DONE.

Questions? Comments? Need help with a project of your own? Send us a note below!!!

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