DIY The Costs of Porch Building

Dreaming of Front Porch Swing'n

I've always enjoyed quiet mornings with a fresh cup of steaming hot coffee. I love to step outside into the fresh Maine air and find a comfortable place to sit, it's so peaceful.  When I lived in Portland I liked to "people watch," but these days it's all country, no doubt there will be deer grazing in the yard, or bunnies nibbling grass.  Back in the city I was happy just to find outside space, like the steps to my apartment, but now I want more of an outside living room. 

Our old house and sweet little porch.

Don and I had a great little porch at our old house.

Here is a Fun Fact: This is not our 1st renovation, we flipped Don's house to sell, so we could move closer to our work. 
Here's a sad story... we worked really hard on that little house for 2yrs, and made it into a very cozy cottage style home and sold for a good profit.
Here's the sad part: The freshly made over house is now home to farm animals, hay-bails, & chickens, as well as, the new home owners...I know this cause it's a small town.

Let's get back on task.
I've always dreamt of having a big farmers porch that wrapped around the whole house.  Something about it seems so homey, I love it!  So, when Don and I bought this big old house without a porch at all, we knew we would be one adding one.

A large part of home renovations is getting the design you want, and somehow fitting that into a budget.  Not always easy especially when "Big" is part of the equation.  Our house is large, so adding a small porch would just look disproportionate.

To stay within means we "pay as we go" and we try very hard not to use our Home Depot charge card and only buy materials with a portion of our paychecks.  With that said, I really had no idea of what building my dream porch would cost.

There is a lot to building a deck and Don's prior experience with the constructing a porch and material costs came in handy.
These are the stages/step we it took to get our porch started and the costs along the way.


Step 1 

Starting here we removed the little stairs to each doorway and exposed the foundation sill and repaired a small section of rot under the back door.

This is how it looked starting off

Step 2 

Attached to the sill is the ledger board, this will be where the deck is attached to the house. 

It's important to keep it level.   

Here we have also have marked out where we plan to drill out the deck supports.

Materials needed for Ledger board: $216

- Pressure treated wood 4- 2x6x6  $7ea. $28

- Hardware Lag Screws & Washers  $88
- Seal Tite & flashing (sheds water away from sill) $100

Step 3

I really thought we were getting a machine that would drill the holes for us.  Just back the drill up to the location and lower it down and make a hole.    

Boy was I wrong!!

Don brought this post hole drill home and it was all man and woman power.  It was hard labor all day. We hitting many large rocks that stopped our progress and made us lift this monster in and out of the holes many times.

Equipment: $130
Post Hole Auger rental $100 per day
Crowbar $30

Full days labor drilling out 5 support holes ( 4 feet down)

I really thought we were getting a machine that would drill the holes for us.  Just back the drill up to the location and lower it down and make a hole.    

Boy was I wrong!!

Don brought this post hole drill home and it was all man and woman power.  It was hard labor all day. We hitting many large rocks that stopped our progress and made us lift this monster in and out of the holes many times.

Materials needed: Sweat Equity 

Big strong muscles,  Stamina, sheer determination, and a crowbar (priceless)  

The crowbar pried rocks out that we could not reach deep down in the hole 

and helped to keep the job going.

Side note: Be sure to know where the water line from the well enters the house.  One of our hole had to be shifted to avoid damaging pipes from the well.  That would have been bad...

Step 4 

Don handled this job with all his big strong muscles.  

We choose to buy concrete pillar instead of pouring concrete into sauna tubes.  The cost was about the same, but without the concrete mess.  

Materials needed: $275
5 - 4 ft Concrete pillars - $50 ea. $250

5 bags of crushed rocks $25
Shovel

Step 5 

This is why the ledger board needs to be level. 

The deck frame is attached to the ledger board and sets or the carrier beam.  We framed out
4 - 8x8 sections for the deck frame. That enabled us to buy small amounts of materials at a time and piece the deck together in sections.

Materials Needed for deck framing:  $430
40 pressure treated -2 x 6 x 8  to make 4 - 8ft x 8ft sections $74 ea. = $296

2 - Lg box galvanized deck nails  $60
24 - Joist hangers $1.50 ea. = $36
2 - boxes joist nails  $30

Carrier beam / supports from concrete supports: $105
3- pressure treated 2x6x16  $11.30ea. = $34
1 - pressure treated footing 4x6x8  $16
24 sets of 1/2 x 4" bolts, with washers, & nuts @ $2.30ea. = $55

Pressure treated deck boards for a 32ft x 8ft floor: $450

This is what is finished so far and more work left for next summer.
Grand Total of $1606 plus $112.42tax 

We have the base of our porch.

We still need to build the steps that will wrap this corner and look similar to the front steps.  We'll build the roof, finish the siding, add a small flower garden and make it all beautiful.