Front Porch Part II

This has been a hectic 3 weeks! Considerable progress has been made on getting the front porch back in shape. The porch columns were delivered a few days ago. We decided to go with a traditional Victorian style column style to complement the what we think the house is a folk Victorian example. To be honest we're not certain what the original style was of the house because of all the alterations that were made over the last 100 years! But judging from the high pitch roof, the front porch and architechtual details around the gables which gives a suggestion of some ginger bread styling common to Victorian houses of the era the house has strong indications of some Queen Anne styling.

Porch columns and harvested siding

Back to the porch columns....these are examples of turned columns which traditionally consist of three segments: the top square, the turning and the base square.When a post terminates against a wall then a "half post" was used. Turned columns are typically painted a solid color and often times the the turnings were painted a trim color to give the columns some eye appeal.

The columns in the image are resting against the front wall of the house. The only reason I mention this to point out the the boards used on this wall and around the porch are reclaimed siding from a house that was scheduled to be demolished. The house had had a fire the previous year and we obtained permission from the owners to harvest the siding. Also notice that the majority of the bead board underneath the porch is original to the house. We discovered the old bead board once we removed the sheet rock. We had to replace some of the missing boards with bead boards we harvested from the old kitchen area in the house.