Crafting the Perfect Porch

This piece isn't about rebates or energy upgrades — it's a design and building story from a homeowner who added a small entry porch to his Colonial-style house. The author, a former ad art director turned carpenter, walks through how he planned the addition: figuring out the size and shape first, then checking how doors, windows, columns, and roof overhang would look together before building anything. He used design ideas like balance and proportion (borrowed from advertising) to make the new porch feel like it belonged with the old house, rather than looking tacked on.

On the construction side, he matched the new porch floor to the existing floor height by planning the foundation depth around his area's 36-inch frost line, and used a low-slope roof to avoid visible gutters. For the small roof and headers, he relied on standard code span tables rather than hiring an engineer, since the addition was modest in size.

The second half covers his preferred trim material, cellular PVC, and how he works with it: gluing joints with PVC cement, using stainless screws and glue to handle expansion and contraction, reinforcing built-up trim pieces with scrap backing, and easing sharp edges with a hand plane for a more finished look. None of this involves insulation, heating equipment, or rebate programs — it's really a craftsmanship and design story about building an attractive, well-proportioned porch addition that fits an older home.