A back porch can make a world of difference in the functionality and appeal of the back door of any home. A project worthy of your efforts! Some older homes have solid concrete steps which lead up to the door of the home as ours did. Not very practical or attractive! So, with a little creativity and imagination, the back entrance to your home can transform into a practical and attractive feature increasing the value and curb appeal. This project can be completed DIY with the proper tools and some basic construction knowledge.
Now, 2″ x 10″ ledger boards needs to be attached to the house with lag bolts everywhere that the porch is goin to be attached. We put flashing over the ledger board.
Sticking with the 2″x10″ pressure treated wood, we now box in the frame for our porch. It is very important to make sure that it is square. We then filled in the center with floor joists of the same size 16″ on center spacing. It’s coming together and you can visualize your creation.
The Planning of Your Back Porch
As you can see in the above photo, there are solid concrete steps leading to the door. It is quite a task to remove or move them. Therefore, we decided to leave them in place and design the porch to go around and over the existing steps. There is no harm in leaving them there, if possible.
The design is very similar to deck construction. Take measurements and draw a plan on paper. Then, you’ll be able to determine the lumber that you are going to need for the project once you have your dimensions and design figured out. Our dimensions for this small deck project are 8′ x 4′.
Getting Started On the Back Porch
For our project, we had to poor footers. We go 4 feet deep below grade and required only two due to the small size of the porch and two of the sides attached to the house. We used Sonotube with 4×4 pressure treated posts to hold up the porch frame. Once your footers and posts are in place, it’s time to move on.
It’s time for decking. We use the 1×6 decking boards which are stainable or paintable. If you have seams, make sure to stagger the seams for strength and appearance. Once your decking is down, we can move on to the stairs.
For the stairs, we use the pre-made Stair Stringers. The number of steps is determined by the height of the porch. Place them no more than 12″ apart but for a nice sturdy stair, we went with an 8″ spread between stringers. The number of stingers, of course, Is determined by the width of your stairs which should be a maximum of 36″.
Finishing The Back Porch
We now have a back porch, well, almost. Add some railing and some paint. We used a combination of wood and metal for the railing on the porch. With 4×4 corner posts, we put a base 4×4 across, between the posts. On top of the base 4×4 in between the posts we put black, metal Windsor Railing also extending down the stairs.
With the bottom openings covered with lattice, we have a beautiful back porch. It is a night and day transformation that ads curb appeal and functionality. A project well worth it! Also, check out our deck to porch transformation.
Thank you for visiting our Back Porch 4 Access and Style page. We hope you got at least a little inspiration from it.