Pallet Wood Front Porch

When we bought this house, it was move-in ready - everything was in working order - but there were many things about this house that had not been updated since it was built, back in the late 50's. The front porch is a good example of this: It functioned, but it was a bit worse for wear, if'n you know what I mean! The concrete slab was cracked in the middle and sagged so that the porch was not level. The storm door was original to the house - aluminum and worn-looking.

The first thing we did, early on, was to replace the storm door. I found it through a radio program called Tradio - bought if from someone who was advertising that they had a storm door to sell. We brought it home and it was soon installed....

The planning stage is my favorite part of any project, and this porch was no exception: I thought about an upgrade for some years before we finally decided how we wanted to fix it. When someone gave us a slue of pallets, we had our solution: Fix the porch with pallet wood. Most folks, when they first see our pallet-wood porch, think we just laid whole pallets on the porch. Well, no, that's not how it happened: My husband laboriously and patiently took the pallets apart and de-nailed the boards. Then he planed them. 

The planing process revealed beautiful wood of all kinds - all hard woods, some of them exotic; we certainly had never seen some of those types of woods before. 

Bill had to pre-drill every screw hole before he could screw those boards together; they were that tough. Oh, yes, he broke many a drill bit in the making of this porch. The first thing we did was build a 'jig' - a frame to help us get every one of the 36" squares exactly the same size. We put together 18 36" squares using that jig, then added support boards to each one, then attached the resultant squares to the porch - leveling as we went. 

Once the top boards were in place, the porch was almost complete. 

We opted to finish the wood with a dark walnut stain. 

There was an area at the south end of the porch that was uuuuggly - it was part of the driveway and had concrete on it. It looked  like someone had patched a hole there at one time. There was more concrete next to the house, an obvious attempt to keep rain water out of the basement. It really was ugly!

So, with leftover pallet wood, we built a small deck/step leading up to the front porch.....

By this stage of the project, neighbors were making favorable comments - they liked what they were seeing happen to our porch...

Then we added a railing. The porch was almost done! This was a long process, a difficult project, but we loved working on it, and we now have a lovely front porch. Er, at least we think it's lovely!!!

This photo shows Bill, my husband, adding some stairs to the newly-finished front porch. That man! He is such a hard working guy . . . .