From Scratch Porch

We have been in for a whole year – enjoying every single day living in our home built from scratch.

After living in it we have decided we wouldn't change a thing of how we built the house from our homemade plans – we love our layout.

I didn't have much patience left and even though folks said "don't move till every last thing is done – you'll end up never finishing it" – so we moved in anyway...porches were not finished and we needed permanent stair treads.

[YAY! Stairs are now finished!]

We almost have both done now though it will probably take the rest of the summer to finish the porch project as it is so very much "from scratch".  River sand for filler excavated from our creek, all pavers made from river sand, cement, in homemade forms and hard work, etc.etc.

Carpenter spent a good part of last summer making patio pavers after we priced them at over $6 each! He designed his own forms using a tile for the bottom and wooden sides that interlock and also unscrew to easily let the formed paver drop out.  He made 35 forms and they can get 35 pavers made in about 4-5 hours.  We only need 1500 + (that's all!)

This trusty little cement mixer helped with the 'stirring' – it was bartered for at a job Carpenter did a long while back.

 

So last summer 875 got finished before deer fever hit the Carpenter and his crew.  All of the sand has come from our creek beds and last summer saw all the curbs around the edges completed and reinforced too! So now it is looking like it is a real porch!

The PORCHES wrap around the house and are 11 feet wide – that is 90 feet across front and back and 30 feet on each end...lots of room – I think I have just found myself a new walking track – going round and round my house! For now with the front almost finished we are already enjoying it.  Here are my sisters 'grands' and some of my own 'grands' doing their own type of work – stirring up sand pies amidst the bags of cement and finished pavers. 

(The 'grands' are all "doubles" as my sis married Carpenter's brother :) 

             " Little by little .... inch by inch .... by the yard its hard ... by the inch a cinch!"

                       

Now I want some wonderful ideas to dream about how many rocking chairs to put on and plants and flowers and quilts and pillows and picnic tables and....if you had 2500 square feet of paver porch – what would you dress it up to look like? I"d love some ideas!

~Marmee