A New Room to Enjoy: Building the Screened-in Porch

Sorry it has been so long since I have posted something.  I have been busy again.  And a forewarning, this post is extra long and picture happy. 

I have always wanted a screened-in porch, ever since I was little.  I love the outdoors, and I love our back yard, so we decided to finally go ahead a build one on the patio that is outside our walk out basement.  We have had a lot of flooding problems inside the house because this patio was built without any drainage precautions, but we had a drainage ditch installed along the edge two years ago, and it seems to have fixed the problem.  You can see in this picture, what we were up against.  That’s our dog, Harley.  Also, you can see that the patio wasn’t poured correctly, and so every time we had moisture that froze, it would cause the cement to crack and break apart.  The patio had a lot of shaling, so we decided we would cover that up:-)

Here is what we started with.  Pretty much a blank slate.  We did have help from our good friend, Joel, who helped us move the wood pile, dead leaves, and some dirt, before we got started.  Thanks, Joel!

Thankfully Double D has an extensive background in construction. He took some measurements, wrote some numbers down, and we were off to the store to spend pretty much all of our money we had sat aside for this project.  There wasn’t too much room to manuever on any of the design elements.  Big thanks to our friend Jimmy for letting us borrow his trailer because those boards leaning up against the house are 16 feet long.  There was no way they would fit in my Xterra:-)

We started by laying 1x4s perpendicular to the house, and using a concrete nailer to fix them to the patio.  This was fun, and kind of loud. 

Then we laid the 1/2″ sheets of plywood down over the 1x4s and screwed them on.  We did have to cut three of the pieces to fit, but that wasn’t too big of a deal. After the plywood was on, Double D and I decided to build the east wall.  In order to attach it to the side of the house, the siding had to be cut away to fit a 4×4.  This was the point that there was no going back.  I was basically cutting into the side of my house, and short of residing the entire house, there would be no way to fix it.  We started with tin snips, but eventually had to use the circular saw to cut the siding away. After that, we stood the built wall up and attached it to the side of the house, and the new floor. That was the end of Day One.

For Day Two, my poor, poor parents got roped in to helping us.  However, without them, we wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far as what we did, so a big thanks to them. Pop and Double D started by building the south wall, complete with space for the door.

After it was built, they stood it up and secured it to the east wall, and the flooring.  Now it was starting to look better. Pop and Double D also laid the base plate along the retaining wall for the west wall.  That was hard to do because it has a slope instead of an actual angle, but we worked it out by using short pieces of 2x4s until we got past the slope.  

I don’t have pictures for the next couple of steps, but basically, we ripped some more siding off horizontally along the side of the house for the joist support piece of wood. That took a little bit and the 2x8s were heavy. While Pop was attaching the joist hangers that would hold the 2x4s for the ceiling, Double D and I went behind him and put the 2x4s up, then screwed them in.  That was the end of Day Two (thankfully).

Day Three was just me and Double D working on the porch.  We started by building the west wall because that was the last one that needed to be done.

It was occasionally drizzling, but nothing that hindered us from putting the roof on. We attached the metal flashing over the 2×8 support piece, and then started putting the PVC roofing material on.  We used the wavy wood boards to screw the roof pieces into, and added support pieces in the middle of each one.  We are hoping to put on an actual roof in the next couple of years, but our budget wouldn’t allow for one this time around.  Unfortunately, we got halfway through the pieces when someone (who will remain nameless) drilled into my finger, so it was off to Urgent Care for us.  It was pretty gross, and hurt pretty bad, but I didn’t need any stitches thankfully.  They cleaned it out, gave me tetanus shot, slapped a Band-aid on it, and sent me on my way.  Back to work for me. We worked the rest of the day, and got the ceiling completely covered.  End of Day Three. 

We let it sit for about a week and a half because we were prepping for a camping trip, and dealing with other stuff that life threw at us.

We eventually got back to it, and Day Four consisted of an evening in which we installed a 2x10x20 support beam on the underside of the roof, because we didn’t want the roof to collapse under the weight of any snow we might get.  We live in Kansas, and that is a real possibility considering how much snow we have been known to get.  A big thanks to Russ for helping us out on this one.  I don’t think I could have lifted it too well:-).

Day Five was door installation, screen and trim.  We started with the door, since we knew we wanted to get that on and leveled up.  It was fairly painless, and since we bought an all-in-one kit, went pretty fast.  Next was attaching the screen to each 2×4 from top to bottom, and then doing the triangle pieces that make up the roof slope.  This took the longest, and we did it on the hottest day, so it was no fun.  However, the screen went on well with the use of my electric staple gun my parents got me one Christmas, and was easy to cut to trim it up.   Here is a picture of the east side partially screened.  Only 17 more to go:-)

This picture is of the screen on the west side and half of the south side, with the door already up.  Moving right along. Once the screen was completely up, we then had to trim the outside to cover the staples.  We used a brad nailer borrowed from our friend, Bob.  Thanks, Bob!  That worked very well, and I might have to have one now:-) This will also make it easy to remove any screen that might have to be replaced.  Just pop off the trim pieces, remove the staples and replace the screen. In this picture, the east side is trimmed, and you can see the staples on the south side, waiting to be covered. We got everything done on Day Five, so now all we have to do is enjoy and decorate it!

And here it is completed, cleaned, and my vintage patio furniture put out.

I have a lot more to do with the inside, since I want to build two benches, create a pallet coffee table, and paint a whole bunch of stuff.  For right now, I can’t imagine a more peaceful place to relax.  Thanks Double D for working so hard, and not just slapping something up to the side of the house like I wanted to do! I will be sure to add more pictures after the other projects are complete.  Thanks for looking!

Sarah

Partying with Between Naps on the Porch, Thrifty Decor Chick and The Shabby Creek Cottage: