Good-bye, porch

We're about to start renovations on our house. First thing will be enclosing and extending the porch area to make a new dining room (the old one will be Todd's office), then adding a bathroom downstairs and renovating the bathroom upstairs.

The contractors should start demolition this week. Here are some "before" pictures:


Inside the porch, cleared of furniture and plants. The view is from the kitchen door.


View from the back yard. The house is over 100 years old and existed before the roads, so the front door used to be the back door, and this used to be the front. Now it faces the neighbor's yard.

It's kind of funny, we bought the house in part because of the porch. I had visions of drinking mint juleps there at twilight and watching the fireflies. Bucolic, no? The reality is that the porch is too close to neighbors who fight loudly and skinny-dip in their kiddie pool.

Besides that, we spend most of our time in the front yard, where we have a large yard and gorgeous, shady old maple and magnolia trees blocking the street.