Would you show me some great front porches?
April 20, 2013 12:30 PM Subscribe
I am looking for google street view links to neighbourhoods or streets that have nice front porches as design inspiration for an upcoming renovation.
I am adding on to my house and part of the addition is a 8x20 front porch across the front of the house.
I have the basic design down and I'm now looking for some styling tips.
My porch will look something like these: 1, 2, 3.
More specifically the porch will have windows across the entire front with the entry door on the side. The gable end of the roof will be facing the street and tying into the roof "face" of the existing one story house. This is not an open "veranda" style porch but an enclosed, insulated room.
Here is where you come in. Does your town have a street with particularly nice front porches? Do you know of a street anywhere with nice porches?
I'm looking for google street view links of houses with nice or interesting looking front porches. I want my house and new porch to look "old" and blend in with the street as it is currently. My house is the red one in this streetview if you want to see what the surrounding area looks like.
I am adding on to my house and part of the addition is a 8x20 front porch across the front of the house.
I have the basic design down and I'm now looking for some styling tips.
My porch will look something like these: 1, 2, 3.
More specifically the porch will have windows across the entire front with the entry door on the side. The gable end of the roof will be facing the street and tying into the roof "face" of the existing one story house. This is not an open "veranda" style porch but an enclosed, insulated room.
Here is where you come in. Does your town have a street with particularly nice front porches? Do you know of a street anywhere with nice porches?
I'm looking for google street view links of houses with nice or interesting looking front porches. I want my house and new porch to look "old" and blend in with the street as it is currently. My house is the red one in this streetview if you want to see what the surrounding area looks like.
Response by poster: Thanks.
For clarification, I understand that there are websites that catalog this type of thing and I have spent time on Pinterest, Houzz and Google images looking at pictures. The style I am after tends to be much less grand than what you find on design sites. The rather plain appearance makes it unlikely that somebody has taken a specific picture, hence the use of google street view.
I asked this question because I felt it would be an efficient way to be able to view streets or areas with similar styles, as porch styles tend to be fairly uniform across neighbourhoods.
What I'm looking for is AskMe's help to find the neighbourhoods to look in.
posted by davey_darling at 1:13 PM on April 20, 2013
For clarification, I understand that there are websites that catalog this type of thing and I have spent time on Pinterest, Houzz and Google images looking at pictures. The style I am after tends to be much less grand than what you find on design sites. The rather plain appearance makes it unlikely that somebody has taken a specific picture, hence the use of google street view.
I asked this question because I felt it would be an efficient way to be able to view streets or areas with similar styles, as porch styles tend to be fairly uniform across neighbourhoods.
What I'm looking for is AskMe's help to find the neighbourhoods to look in.
posted by davey_darling at 1:13 PM on April 20, 2013
There are similar houses in my neighborhood. I'd start looking around here or here.
posted by desjardins at 1:38 PM on April 20, 2013
posted by desjardins at 1:38 PM on April 20, 2013
Searching for "craftsman enclosed porch", "bungalow enclosed porch", and "cottage enclosed porch" comes up with some good images.
posted by ocherdraco at 4:06 PM on April 20, 2013
posted by ocherdraco at 4:06 PM on April 20, 2013
FWIW, there's at least one front porch pool on Flickr. A search on "enclosed porch" will turn up more images. One from a search for "glassed-in porch": ooooh, pretty. Another one (glass porch).
Also, this is a great comment about the life of front porches.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:25 PM on April 20, 2013
Also, this is a great comment about the life of front porches.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:25 PM on April 20, 2013
I'll just say that personally I'm not keen on the once-a-porch-now-a-room look in general -- it seems like a hack that happened and never got un-happened, like a house that never took down its winter plastic from the windows. If you're actually building a new, insulated room, I would encourage you to make it look architecturally like part of the house rather than a "porch", that is, a new gabled wing with an attractive front entry. And if you're building not-a-porch I'm not sure why you're using the word or looking for examples by that name.
Magazines such as This Old House regularly feature home renovations that particularly include attention paid to the front entry. For various reasons, the style of home popular between about 1940 and 1980 tended to make the entry disappear, and now people prefer to highlight it with a nice, inviting porch, whether just a small entryway or a big sitting porch. If you're building new it seriously won't change your costs much but it will be more stylistically durable and help your home's value down the road if that's at all important to you.
To the extent that blending in is important, the place to look for examples is locally. You don't need to choose a single template, either, of course -- you can mix and match elements. For one thing, assuming you do like the board-and-batten look you currently have, you'd want to continue that around the porch so it looks like it was original, not an addition/afterthought. The gable you describe sounds like the look of photo #3 and I endorse that as a choice.
Anyway, part of what I'm saying is that few people would consider a three-season/enclosed porch a "great front porch", and by closing off the porch look, you're sort of undermining the things that make a porch potentially visually, architecturally, or socially great. Here's a gallery of porches/facades from Galena IL, and if any of them were ever enclosed what they've done is remove that. Some of these from Aurora IL are before/after showing that process. Or consider this cautionary tale about living porchless.
So if you're going this route I suggest you think about how to configure/use the space from an interior perspective. Is it going to be a screen-window summer living room? Will you feel comfortable having a TV out there? Will you serve meals there? It's not just how it looks from the street, in other words, it's how you intend to work it into your household life.
posted by dhartung at 7:10 PM on April 20, 2013 [3 favorites]
Magazines such as This Old House regularly feature home renovations that particularly include attention paid to the front entry. For various reasons, the style of home popular between about 1940 and 1980 tended to make the entry disappear, and now people prefer to highlight it with a nice, inviting porch, whether just a small entryway or a big sitting porch. If you're building new it seriously won't change your costs much but it will be more stylistically durable and help your home's value down the road if that's at all important to you.
To the extent that blending in is important, the place to look for examples is locally. You don't need to choose a single template, either, of course -- you can mix and match elements. For one thing, assuming you do like the board-and-batten look you currently have, you'd want to continue that around the porch so it looks like it was original, not an addition/afterthought. The gable you describe sounds like the look of photo #3 and I endorse that as a choice.
Anyway, part of what I'm saying is that few people would consider a three-season/enclosed porch a "great front porch", and by closing off the porch look, you're sort of undermining the things that make a porch potentially visually, architecturally, or socially great. Here's a gallery of porches/facades from Galena IL, and if any of them were ever enclosed what they've done is remove that. Some of these from Aurora IL are before/after showing that process. Or consider this cautionary tale about living porchless.
So if you're going this route I suggest you think about how to configure/use the space from an interior perspective. Is it going to be a screen-window summer living room? Will you feel comfortable having a TV out there? Will you serve meals there? It's not just how it looks from the street, in other words, it's how you intend to work it into your household life.
posted by dhartung at 7:10 PM on April 20, 2013 [3 favorites]
Another source of pictures is mls.ca. Since most of the main pictures are front exterior shots it is easy to see which ones have the porch you are looking for. In my neighbourhood, this is a nice one, as is this one.
posted by saucysault at 7:52 AM on April 22, 2013
posted by saucysault at 7:52 AM on April 22, 2013
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posted by Unred at 12:37 PM on April 20, 2013