One of our most favorite features in our new house is our screen porch. It extends right off the living room, which is on the second floor of our home because of the walk-out basement. The ceiling in the porch is a 2-story post and beam structure. The screen porch looks out over our huge Pennsylvania bluestone patio and beautiful yard. At 12’ x 20’, it truly is an extension of our living room in the summer.
When we had the house inspected before we bought it, we knew there were some issues with the screen porch. The inspector said that the main header beam was rotten and that it would need to be replaced. Luckily, I have a very handy Dad who is retired and was willing to help us fix it. The only problem is that Dad lives out of state and runs his own handyman business so he doesn’t always have as much time to spend on our projects. But I have his only grandchild as incentive to come visit!
Dad and hubby started to get to work on the porch very shortly after moving last August. Unfortunately the porch was in worse shape that we realized. Pulling off the trim revealed rotten structural beams, and a floor with dry rot. The header was replaced, many of the beams were replaced or repaired, and the floor was replaced. After much consideration, we decided to replace the original wood tongue-and-groove porch floor with Aeratis, a PVC porch floor product. It was much more expensive than wood, but the thought of a maintenance free, splinter-free floor appealed to us a lot. And it really does look beautiful. We researched alternative products like Trex, which would have been cheaper, but ultimately decided that we needed tongue-and-groove porch flooring because we didn’t want bugs to come into the porch through the gaps in the floor of a traditional deck. And two local lumber yards highly recommended the Aeratis product. It was a big investment in time and $$, but I think it was worth it.
Stay tuned for Screen Porch Renovation--Part 2.
Stay tuned for Screen Porch Renovation--Part 2.
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| New Aeratis porch floor. |
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| New header and support structure. |
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| Another view of the porch |
I think the renovation went on pretty great. We really do have to take care of our porches, especially if they’re on the second level as they would have a tendency to collapse. It is a good thing that you have great family members that are very handy at construction and you got all the help you could get from trusted people you trust. I hope everything went well with this renovation.
ReplyDeleteArthur Bryant