New Porch

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of construction on our house. We've owned here for two years now, and were very excited to get to the "new windows and a patio cover" phase of improvements.

Cassie of Spiralworks doing the framing. Now this is the open-air patio walkway between the dining room and the art studio. It's had my sweet little herb garden and a tree, which we had to take out.

We did as much of the work as we could, like sanding and oiling all the boards ourselves, digging the post holes and jackhammering. Yowsa!

We used locally made, GREEN oil for the wood. Really lovely stuff and good for the enviornment. UV protective covering plastic.


Finished! Check out that grey Oregon sky!

The patio cover is angled for wind, and higher than the roofs to allow for future roof and gutter cleaning/repairs, as well as air circulation so we don't create a green house effect in summer.

This is right off the kitchen/dining room so we like to put a cute little table out here and sip tea and dine all summer (as well as our dining spot in the garden). There are many times when it's raining out but not very cold, and will be lovely to have the porch to sit on. The dog and cats are already enjoying it.


View to the art studio. Look, there's a monkey on my roof!!!

The day following the porch's grand opening, it rained! We all ran outside in our slippers to "test" it.


Mud, rubble and the rest of the path to jackhammer up! We'll be re-routing the pathway from the gate in a more open and curve, with big stepping stones (not those you see) and nice rock. I am looking forward to adding lots of pretty potted plants, including my herbs, and hanging bird feeders. I received a gorgeous, hand blown glass hummingbird feeder for xmas. Did you know the Oregon hummers are already out and mating?? I'll post a pic of the feeder this weekend.

Check out the new sliding door and energy efficient windows!!!! The house is amazingly warmer. In Oregon, we get a zero interest loan from the energy company to install energy saving, healthy windows! Saves everyone money and energy waste.

It's a good time to get some work done on your house. Doing our part to stimulate the economy by hiring two local, small, awesome contracting compaines (one for windows, one for porch). :-)

next big project might be painting the house.... what do you suggest?

cheers