When you think about summer memories, most of Americans will think about blue skies, endless summer days spent with friends and loved ones on the front porch – enjoying a glass of ice cold beer and letting the world go by. We all love to hold tight to our memories, and those parts in our personal history that are important to us; for many of us, that includes a sprawling front porch with its hospitable staircase, hand worn railing and battered turned spindles and newel posts.

Some architectural home design styles would be less wonderful without the use of a front porch – Arts and Crafts, Georgian, the traditional clapboard farmstead and of course, the grand Victorian are just a few of the most popular.

A porch should be big enough for at least a few people to gather on – that is the basic definition. However, in America a front porch is typically large enough for a patio set, a porch swing and potted plants. A lot of porches are front and center under the front entrance, others take up the whole front of the home, and many wrap around 3 or 4 sides of the house.

Regardless of the house style or what year it was built, a front porch has numerous common design and structural components. Any porch is made of up four main components:

1.    Newel Posts – Box newels, over the post newels, and ornate newels. There are many different kinds of newels available if you are upgrading solid wood balusters on your current porch or building a new one. Cherry and oak wood newels are well liked because of the wood’s beauty and durability.

2.    Balusters – The balustrade are often made of solid wood, but recently have been replaced with black metals such as wrought and cast, or tempered glass. Solid wood porch decorative balusters still remain popular as they give that warm, familiar feel and can be very affordable. A cast iron baluster in a sleek design pattern can be lovely on a contemporary residence.

3.    Railings – Top and bottom banisters are often made of solid wood. These are the parts of your porch that often take the most ‘human’ abuse. You will touch the railings, hang flowering plants from them and paint railings. Your family will lean into the railing and your children will sit on top of them. Therefore, the railings need to be well built and hard wearing to ensure your porch lasts for many, many years.

4.    Floor or Base – Essentially the component of your porch that gets the most wear and tear, there are many modern options for a porch floor. Old porches have wood or concrete floors and these options are still available today. There are also other new materials on the market such as non slip exterior granite that would also be aesthetically pleasing and hard wearing.

Although not discussed in the list of four above, stairs would be a close fifth. Not all porches, particularly if they are constructed at ground level or on a 2nd level off an upstairs sitting room, for example, will not have stairs. However, most conventional porches that lead to the front door of a residential property do include a small staircase.
Although the front porch did lose popularity in house construction after WW2, it is experiencing a significant comeback. Maybe this is because Americans long to return to a simpler era when it was okay to take time for you andn your loved ones without having to dart off to our work. maybe the front porch represents a stronger family unit when families did things together – a time before video game machines, personal computers and cell phones.

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