Going going gone

It's official.  We no longer have a front porch.

When we bought this house, we had a very through inspection done by a very nice man (with a very nice pony tail and a head set he talked into).  Being that this house is nearly 100 years old, we knew that he would find something that needed work.

What he found was that our whole front porch was rotten and essentially sinking.  We had noticed a slope while standing on the porch, but didn't realize that it was because of years of rotting that was happening under foot.

Luckily for us, the sellers were good about wanting to take care of the problem.  They paid to get the whole thing replaced (score!).  So, now that it is not raining every day (only every other day), we decided it was time to begin the demolition.

This is what our porch originally looked like:

Not only is the wood rotten, but the cement stairs had definitely seen better days.  

We are a bit nuts about retaining the old features of the deck and sticking with the style of the house, so we are salvaging all the railings, beams and posts (that aren't completely rotted through).  They are essentially saving the whole top part and just getting rid of the base of the porch.

So the demo started on Monday (and of course I wanted to document the demo).

This was Tuesday's progress:

Then I realized that the big hole in my house went straight into my basement.  I had a mini panic attack and called Chris to tell him that people could just walk into our basement!!  Well, walk was a strong term (and possibly a gross over-exaggeration), but they totally could have crawled in.  So to calm me down he suggested getting a tarp to cover the big gaping hole into our basement.  Being new to home ownership, I have not yet acquired any tarps (maybe this is a potential stocking stuffer??)  Luckily for me, I have amazing parents who not only own a huge tarp, but were willing to drive all the way over and help us secure the tarp over our hole.  Although this didn't do much for our safety, it made me feel WAY better.

So here we are on Wednesday and I almost don't remember the old deck and am starting to like the huge gaping hole in front of our house.  I'm getting used to having to use our back door, although I think our front door is getting lonely from non-use.

They are starting the rebuild process tomorrow and should be done in the next week or so.  I'm pretty darn excited to have a level deck and no more rotting going on under me.  We are also building wood stairs this time, so they will match the house.  I'm starting to dream of how we will use this front porch once it is functioning again.  I'm thinking I need to get some chairs like the ones below.  And YES, in case you were wondering, this picture is from one of our neighbors houses that I creepily/covertly took while out on a run (I'm like the neighborhood stalker with a camera).

Notice what color these are???  Yes, I'm still obsessed with green things.