Note the excellent condition of the wood on the front of the awning!

A couple of weeks ago my family descended on Boulder to help us with a project that we’ve wanted to do ever since moving into our house nearly three years ago: building a new front porch. The one that came with the house was really badly constructed, even to the point of us wondering why someone would bother putting in the work to make it in the first place.

The roof was just tarred, no shingles or anything, and it bowed in the middle so all the water would pool there. Eventually the water begin seeping behind the piece of wood on the front of the awning so that whenever it would rain or snow would melt we would have water falling all down the front of the awning instead of draining off.

To add to this whole problem, the top of the porch was covered in nothing but plywood and astroturf. This meant that all the water that dripped from the defective awning would then be soaked up into these substandard materials, slowly rotting them both.

In a word, the porch was a wreck. I’m completely surprised it lasted through as many winters as it did.

But, being the awesome people that they are, my family gave up a week of vacation to come and help us build a new one.

First we had our friend Andy, who is a contractor, come out and remove the old crappy porch (see above photo). This turned out to be great news for my brother, who is deathly afraid of wasps, but bad news for Andy and his team because our porch was home to no less than six wasp nests.

The good news from the demolition was that although some components (plywood, astroturf, front of awning) were destroyed,

Demo is complete

the foundations of both the main porch and the awning we almost like new. This meant we wouldn’t have to devote time, energy and money into redoing those and could instead just basically recover the existing frame.

So the family arrived on a Monday evening and we set to work on Tuesday morning. The work crew consisted of Dan, my dad (Ken), my grandfather (Bill) and my brother (Brad), supplemented with help from me, my mom (Cindy) and my grandmother (Sherry). My family is VERY handy, and I was continually in awe of how quickly and easily they tackled the project. Mad props to you all.

You can see from the photos what a dramatic improvement there was over the course of the week, and we even had time to add some lovely flower pots to the finished product.

Now when it rains we don’t have to dodge little waterfalls coming down the front of our awning, nor are there treacherous puddles in fraying astroturf to contend with. Thank you everyone for coming to our aid! The new porch is fantastic and we love it!

Phase 1: New Awning is Installed

Phase 2: New Cover for Porch

Phase 3: Flowers, Numbers, Light - the Finishing Touches!