The popularity of the screened porch — sometimes built onto an already existing deck, sometimes not — is about several things. One, Brown says, it’s a room where homeowners can relax, outdoors but under a roof, and which they don’t have to vacuum and dust every day. Being screened, it’s bug-free. Being sheltered, homeowners “aren’t getting hammered by the August sun.” Jim Craig, owner of Craig Sundecks and Porches in Marshall, Va., which built 100 porches last year, points out that a well-built porch adds value to the home in a way that a patio or deck (he builds both) would not and could not. “If you build the porch right” — he regularly installs mahogany tongue-and-groove flooring, recessed lights, switches, ceiling fans — “it’s not just a deck with a screen wrapped around it and a roof stuck on top. It’s like another room in the house. It just happens to be outside.”
Don’t Have to Fool With It In the past, many homeowners weren’t thrilled with the idea of scraping and painting the porch on an annual basis. Paul DeFelice and others say the availability of low-maintenance composites, including tongue-and-groove flooring, but also columns, railings, etc., which are now an increasingly popular material for homeowners desiring decks, has contributed to porch popularity. On the front porches he builds, Zielinski suggests brick, stone, or composite flooring. “I tell clients: wood is going to shrink, crack, rot, quit,” he says. “You can basically have a maintenance-free porch with composite flooring, columns, fascia, and ceiling, if you want it. We can build something you’re not going to have to fool with anymore.” He estimates that composite flooring might add a thousand dollars to the cost of an average porch. “But it’s not like you’re going from $300 to $1,300. You’re going from $12,000 to $13,000. It’s an upsell.”
Craig Sundecks & Porches, on the other hand, always specs Brazilian hardwoods for porch flooring. “That’s the first way to bring a porch into the light of a room addition,” Craig says.
The Porch Market Porches take longer to build, often involve foundation, electrical, and sometimes HVAC and plumbing subcontractors, and require a skilled hand at the design table. That’s because the structure has to tie into the roofline of the house and, especially with a front porch, blend architecturally with the facade. Porches, Brown says, involve a degree of complexity that most deck builders are not prepared for, nor should they be taking on.
“I had some people show up last weekend,” he says, “and they said: ‘We would like a porch, but we have no idea how you would put a roof on in that area.’” Brown describes their ranch home, plus addition, as a “festival of roofs” that would defeat the design capabilities of many deck builders.
Craig says it’s not just the design but the actual construction that would leave many deck builders scratching their heads, since they’re not accustomed to building walls or roofs.
“Once you get into rafters, layover roofs, reverse hips, crickets … now you’re a full-blown carpenter,” he points out. In addition, he says, many deck builders don’t know to mark up porch projects to get the proper margins. “It takes a little more effort, a little more knowledge, and a better product than most are willing to build.”
Use the Web to Promote As is the case with deck projects, Web sites help to sell porches, notes Peggy Mackowski, vice president of Quality Construction in Raleigh, N.C. Her company’s site functions as a virtual showroom. “We use it as a pre-selling tool, before we get out there and actually visit with the client,” she says. Many times, people unfamiliar with the remodeling process, Mackowski says, “have no idea how to get started.” Atlanta Deck Company, parent of Georgia Front Porch, offers a site featuring 43 pictures of screened porches, 24 windowed porches, and 17 open porches. Zielinski says the company will provide the prospect with a digitally enhanced photo of their home, complete with porch, as part of its proposal. “We put a porch on the house before we start construction,” he says. “So they don’t have to try to visualize it.”
