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Ours is pretty large which I find great when it rains we can still be out and not get wet unless it’s super windy. It has a cement floor which has been nice to not have wood to stain or the elements coming up from below. I’d love to make it a 3 season room or maybe add a fireplace. We use it all the time so it is definitely worth having (to us).
Do you grill? We put a commercial vent hood in ours and I never have to get wet or change plans when it rains or snows. It’s cheaper than you would think and well worth it.
TV? Oh, yes.
What better way to spend a summer afternoon than with a cold beverage, half-awake on the porch with a baseball game on?
I can easily see the merits of a TV on the porch.
I've had a TV on my deck for the last few years. Spend lots of fall evenings/nights sitting in hammock watching sports. I just out old plasma TVs out there, plug.in a Roku and put a cheap waterproof cover.from Amazon over it. Investment is minimal. Biggest issue is to remember to take cover off periodically in spring/summer to kill any insect nests.
Have an upstairs and a downstairs screened porch, and having a screened porch (or something easy to enclose into one) was a must for this house and any other going forward. They're stack on top of each other, each 16x10. That size works, but I'd gladly take bigger. Ceiling fans a must. We use them year round even being screened and unheated, but that Easy Breeze idea looks tempting if for no reason other than pollen blocking. Admittedly, I'm usually the only one hanging out there in this 20 degree weather, in a down-lined hammock with a down sleeping bag.
The two-floor configuration actually made a bit of a problem for the first floor ceiling fan, since the "roof" is open to the elements and the original fan box was just on a regular joist, so no way to protect the wiring inside the canopy from the rain. Finally found an outdoor fan box designed for this (Arlington RainBox), has a wide medallion so the fan canopy stays enclosed. Far nicer looking than hacking some kind of j-box enclosure myself.
Do wish we had an unscreened extension deck where we could put the grills (and potted sun-loving herbs). The only real downside to having the porches is it reduces in natural light inside, so make sure you have enough windows elsewhere. And if you have young kids and an outdoor table, keep a spray bottle of cleaner always ready to nuke mold from spilled juice that went unnoticed...
RedbirdSaint-I am going to have a screened porch for the first time in our new house, and the reduced light is a concern. We had the choice of having it off the master bedroom or off the family room, and I am hoping I didn't make the wrong choice having it off the family room. To be honest I never hang out in the family room because my husband watches awful movies or the news, so I do my own thing. But I'm hoping it doesn't make the kitchen too dark. I'm thinking since the back of the house faces South maybe reducing the light will be a good thing.
At any rate I m really looking forward to sitting out there!
RedbirdSaint-I am going to have a screened porch for the first time in our new house, and the reduced light is a concern. We had the choice of having it off the master bedroom or off the family room, and I am hoping I didn't make the wrong choice having it off the family room. To be honest I never hang out in the family room because my husband watches awful movies or the news, so I do my own thing. But I'm hoping it doesn't make the kitchen too dark. I'm thinking since the back of the house faces South maybe reducing the light will be a good thing.
At any rate I m really looking forward to sitting out there!
Our old screened porch was very dark. It is north facing and the previous owners painted it a dark brown opaque color and the ceiling was stained brown. The side trapezoids were also closed. These were all things we changed in the design of our new porch. We painted the ceiling and pillars white to reflect light and kept the trapezoids on the side, where light comes in glass. We installed 4 skylights and a tile on the floor that is not dark. The new porch is very bright. I do wish we changed our back door to a slider to also take maximum advantage of any light coming in the back.
RedbirdSaint-I am going to have a screened porch for the first time in our new house, and the reduced light is a concern. We had the choice of having it off the master bedroom or off the family room, and I am hoping I didn't make the wrong choice having it off the family room. To be honest I never hang out in the family room because my husband watches awful movies or the news, so I do my own thing. But I'm hoping it doesn't make the kitchen too dark. I'm thinking since the back of the house faces South maybe reducing the light will be a good thing.
At any rate I m really looking forward to sitting out there!
I'm sure you'll get more use of it by having it off the family room, sounds like the right call.
For those with fireplaces, do you have them on an exterior corner of the porch, mid-wall, or something else?
Wood burning or gas?
I'm kind of obsessed at the moment with having an old wood stove outside on a porch for some reason.
I REALLY wanted a wood burning fireplace or wood stove on our porch, but we didn't have enough setback from the house to make it practical and it would've been installed where it would block our view.
Instead we had a direct vent gas fireplace added to a side wall so as to not block our nice view out the back directly into the forest. Having lived with this setup for a couple of years, I'm glad we have the gas. The ambience isn't the same, however I can turn on the fire (with a remote, no less) and once the fan kicks on the porch warms up quickly and I can sit comfortably to watch TV. When I'm done, I just turn off the fire and I'm done. The convenience is awesome! If we had the wood burning setup, we would use the porch far less on cool days/nights as it would be more of an "event" to build and tend the fire. I'll aspire to a setup like that in retirement instead.
RedbirdSaint-I am going to have a screened porch for the first time in our new house, and the reduced light is a concern. We had the choice of having it off the master bedroom or off the family room, and I am hoping I didn't make the wrong choice having it off the family room. To be honest I never hang out in the family room because my husband watches awful movies or the news, so I do my own thing. But I'm hoping it doesn't make the kitchen too dark. I'm thinking since the back of the house faces South maybe reducing the light will be a good thing.
At any rate I m really looking forward to sitting out there!
As I posted earlier in the thread, this was my biggest concern when we added a porch in back of our family room. We opted for a vaulted ceiling, done in shiplap which is painted a very very pale blue and like Sal_M above, we put in 2 large skylights. The porch is light, airy with plenty of sunlight and our family continues to get great light.
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