Adventures In Living and Gardening

When you conjure up summer memories, many of us will think about clear skied, infinite summer days spent with those you love spending time with on the front porch – drinking ice cold beer and watching the world go by. We all love to hold tight to our past, and those things in our history that are very important to us; for many of us across America, that includes a sprawling front porch with its hospitable staircase, hand worn railing and battered turned spindles and newel posts.

Some architectural home styles would be lackluster without the company of a front porch – Arts and Crafts, Georgian, the traditional wood clad farmstead and yes, even, the grand Victorian are a few of the most famous.

A porch should be big enough for at least a small group to gather on – that is the loose definition. However, in America a front porch is often big enough for outdoor furniture, a porch swing and a variety of plants. Some are front and center under the main entrance, others span the whole front of the home, and others wrap around 3 or 4 sides of the building.

It doesn’t really matter the house style or when it was built, a front porch has several common design and construction components. Any porch is made of up four main components:

1.    Newel Posts – Box newels, over the post newels, and ornate newels. There are so many varieties of newel posts available if you are remodeling solid wood balusters on your current porch or building a new one. Oak and cherry wood newel posts are a popular choice because of the wood’s durability and beauty.

2.    Balusters – The balustrade are commonly made of solid wood, but in more recent times have been replaced with cast iron or tempered glass. Solid wood porch spindles still remain popular as they give that warm, familiar feel and can be very cost effective. A cast iron baluster in a decorative design can be visually stunning on a modern home.

3.    Railings – Top and bottom hand rails are commonly made of wood. These are the components of your porch that generally take the most ‘human’ abuse. You will handle them, hang plants from them and paint them. Your family will lean into the railing and your children and grandchildren will sit on the railing tops. Railings need to be ultra strong and durable to ensure your porch lasts for many years to come.

4.    Floor or Base – Basically the part of your porch that handles the foot traffic, there are many modern options for a porch floor. Old porches have wood or concrete floors and these flooring materials are still available today. There are also many new products on the market such as non slip outdoor granite that would also be visually stunning and designed to last a lifetime.

Although not listed in the list of 4 above, stairs would be a close fifth. Not all porches, especially if they are built on the ground or on a upper floor off an upstairs sitting room, for example, will not have stairs. Otherwise, the majority of conventional porches that lead to the front door of a home do include a small staircase.
Although the front porch did fall out of favor in house architecture after WWII, it is experiencing a steady comeback. Maybe this is because people want to return to a simpler place and time when it was acceptable to take time for yourself and those that you care about without having to race off to work. maybe the front porch represents a stronger family unit when families did things together – a less stressful time before video games, computers and PDA’s and iPhones.

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