Fort Wayne开放有顶门廊建造项目丨美国韦恩堡

Open porch in Fort Wayne IN by Archadeck

It’s funny that when you start thinking about building a leisure space in your back yard you have to think of how much work that leisure space will be. Let’s face it, more living space could mean more sweeping, more cleaning, more annual maintenance and just more work.

The wonder of low-maintenance materials

Many of us have Pergo floors and aluminum siding and other high-quality, long-lasting and low-maintenance materials used on our homes. There are many other low-maintenance materials that can be used in building outdoor structures that can make your outdoor structure nearly maintenance free. You can even get synthetic bead board. These materials have tremendously strong and long warranties, are easier to clean and make your life a lot easier.

Does anyone remember the annual painting party to paint wood siding on our older homes? I barely remember it, not because it was so long ago, but because I try so hard to forget it.

At this Fort Wayne home, here are all the low-maintenance materials we used:

AZEK trim

Synthetic shakes on exterior gable

Fiberglass fluted columns

AZEK beadboard

Fort Wayne open porch with tongue and groove ceiling, ceiling fans and VELUX skylights

When I met with the homeowners, they said that they wanted a structure that would provide some relief from the sun as they tended to their gardening and enjoyed their in-ground pool.  They were unsure of whether that relief would be in the form of a retractable awing, a pergola, a free-standing pool-side cabana, or an attached open porch.  As they had a beautifully spacious and well groomed backyard, we also had several places we could consider for a shade structure.  As we talked and explored the pros and cons, we settled on two options, a free-standing poolside cabana and an attached porch.  I drew up concepts and proposals for both and an attached porch was the eventual choice.  Once that decision was made, we then had to decide on the materials we would use and  how those materials would affect the budget.  Furthermore, while outdoor shade was the ultimate goal, there was concern that the roof structure would block too much light getting to the inside, so two low-profile Velux skylights were incorporated into the roof to allow some light through the windows that were being covered by the roof.

Fort Wayne open porch before and after

They had significant brick trim on the front of their house and for continuity, they wanted to see if we could incorporate some brick into the back yard project. We accomplished that by building the roof column support bases from matching brick.

In terms of comfort and enjoyment of their new covered porch, we also installed ceiling fans, installed speakers, and incorporated recessed lights so they could enjoy this outdoor room into the evening and entertain out there at night.

From a technical perspective, we had some challenges.  The part of the house we were attaching the porch to was an area that that had been previously added to the house.  The gable roofs were two different heights and to keep from creating a roof drainage problem with the addition of the porch roof, we had to incorporate a “cricket” to ensure proper drainage.  They were also experiencing gutter overflow, so when were added the gutter for the porch, we used oversized gutter and downspouts to alleviate the existing problem.  The homeowners wanted minimum columns supporting the porch so  in order to use just two columns, we used engineered beams to support the 22′ span.

You can tell that I enjoy the design and building process but I also very much enjoy consulting with homeowners to find the right concept. Here are a couple of design renderings that were created for these homeowners in the quote and consultation process so they would know exactly what they were getting.

Fort Wayne Open Porch Design Archadeck

Here’s another.

Fort Wayne covered porch design rendering - Archadeck

Here is the architectural drawing.

Fort Wayne Open porch architectural drawing

Take a look at the video showing this project.