karinoyo

If you’ve ever eyeballed a house and said, “something’s not right about that,” then please look this way as well. Gotta figure out what to do, and could use some extra input.

Bottom line is this: the brick archways in front of the house — some contractor’s measly attempt at arched spanish/tuscan style veranda — are cracking. It’s gotten bad enough thanks to my procrastination that I suspect the arches are at the point where it’ll require dismantling in order to remantle properly. That is, it’s beyond when we could just point up the mortar. There’s definitely a good quarter-to-half inch gap, but for now, the cracks are creating a keystone-like effect at the top of the arches. (One arch is really bad; the other is so-so.)

Problem is, the last thing I want to do is spend any time and effort on doing the garden directly in front of the house, let alone the sheltered area behind the arches, only to have it all crushed by anyone doing masonry work. (And you just know they’ll crush the plants and/or destroy the brick-stone I lay, because this is a rule of getting to be a contractor. It’s just insult to injury that when they do kill several lovely plants, they’ll offer me like $2 for stupid annuals instead of forking over the $30 I’d spend on native perennials. Of course.)

Which means I don’t want to risk it, and instead would prefer to have a game plan now, so I can adjust any dependencies. Thing is, CP likes those arches, and while I like arches as a concept, I consider these arches to be too wide, and too awkward, to balance properly with the house. Hell, the arches themselves are only one of the whacked elements of the house’s face. Shall we count the ways? Ah, let’s.

I should note first that one thing on my “not mandatory but would really like to have happen if I just happen to have a relative who dies and leaves me a decent chunk of change, ahem,” is a new front door. Preferably one in which the lights are the same as any on the garage door — in other words, if you put the front door next to the garage doors, and the garage door has a series of square windows in the top-most row, the front door would have a window with the exact same placing.

That may sound strange, but trust me on this one, it’s a subtle detail 99% of folks out there don’t realize is what gives older homes (like bungalows) the sense of a consistency… and what reassures us, and welcomes us, when it comes to exterior design, is consistency. As you can guess, this house ain’t got it. So, onward to the sketches.

Btw, it’s not visible in all the sketches, but the idea is that instead of putting up a roof-extension, I’d instead like to extend the roof via corrugated pvc. Yes, you heard that right, but relax, I’m not talking about using that bright neon-green my grandparents had on their front porch! We have no gutters, so the idea is that an extension slid under the existing rafters would let water run down to the veranda-wall, and then gutters could be set along the top of the wall (and probably hidden a bit more effectively, then, as well). Then, on top of the PVC, I’d lay lathe, set up about an inch off the PVC, and that’s where I’d train vines — I was considering trumpet vine, but everyone tells me it’s too aggressive (but that’s why I like it so much). May end up with butterfly vine instead, but whatever.

Point is, from the point of view of visitors, there’d be a trellis running from the front door all the way down to the far side of the garage. Don’t know if I’d extend the underlayer of the overhang past the front porch, but for now, just think, “trellis covered with vines, like a whacked pergola”, okay?

Okay, #1:

Here, the idea is to remove the brick columns and replace with wooden columns sitting on squared brick pedestals. The sketches are actually to scale, to some degree; in this sketch the columns are 8″ resting on 14″ square bases, 3′ high. Don’t know why, but that proportion looked best when I mapped it out in a full design, but it’s subject to change per suggestion — the point is that these are a little more substantial than 4×4s.

The curved beams (actually laminated plywood, most likely, don’t ask, yes, it’s possible and yes, I know how to do that now!) aren’t structural; they’re just to echo the arches CP likes, but keeping a sort of solidity equal to what’s around the windows.

[Note: I don't actually know if the woodwork around the windows is structural, or attached to anything structural, and since this house ain't no legacy, I'd rather go for camouflage where I can, and fix/replace only where I have to or where I'm going to kill someone if I have to look at the detail one more time. So for now, assume that if I paint/reseal the brick, it's likely I'll paint the woodwork a similar shade, just to make it a bit less prominent.]

#2 is kinds of columns I kept seeing in Mexican & Spanish revival, which could be stucco’d or whitewashed brick or stone (but I didn’t see any examples in wood). The columns are straight, about 10″ to 12″ square — and the cap-detail is at about 5′, which is a nice cut-off of the 3/5 rule. The arches are a bit flatter, too, but there’s still four columns along the front. Like sketch #1, this would include a facade-added column at the far right, since there’s not enough room on the porch itself… but that, I think, is needed for balance.

#3 is also based on the column styles I say in a bunch of midwest/southwest traditional ranch homes, if the more citified version than in #1. Here, the columns are only about 6″ or so square, and resting on squarish bases maybe at most 6″ or so high. As the house’s foundation is 6″ elevated along this stretch, having any kind of porch/veranda raised to that point means a level horizontal line, and putting a ’stone’ base (probably submerged concrete but with stone facade for a short bit) for each column sets the line for what would be ‘under’ any veranda. Erm, if that makes sense.

Tagged: architecture, design, landscaping, porches