When I last reported on our back porch/sun room renovation, it looked something like this:

The demo of the existing covered back porch as well as the sun room had been completed and work on extending the roof over the south facing wall of the sun room to replace what was a metal awning had begun. Progress has since been made in what feels like both leaps and bounds and baby steps all at once.

The new porch is up and siding has been installed to the exterior sun room walls. And the new windows are in!

While we had planned on keeping the existing exterior shingled siding on the sunroom, when we opened up the interior walls, we discovered a little more water damage and resulting rot than we had expected, which we decided to go ahead and address now, rather than later. And in the process of removing the old siding, we discovered further rot in a corner column that could have caused problems down the road. Good ole old house renovations. We’re not entirely rebuilding the sunroom, but it’s pretty darn close.

The view out my kitchen door has evolved over the last few weeks to where I can now open the back door again and step out (!!!) onto the new porch that extends all the way over the sun room wall. No more gap between the two for things to fall down or for water to cause havoc. Betsy beagle has noticed us starting to open the door again, so she is definitely curious as to when she’s allowed out there again. Soon my girl, soon.

The new roof over the porch was framed Friday – we raised it slightly to be the same height as the roof on the sun room, so that visually it’s all the same plain. Which should also help with the water. It may sound like a theme, but a huge chunk of house maintenance – really, any building maintenance – is steering water off and away from the structure.

Work on the exterior is winding down – insulation on the sun room walls is scheduled for the end of the week while the electrician was here last week roughing in outlets. For the time being, the work crew has been entering and existing the sun room from the outside via a window hole. The plan is to do that until it’s time to trim out the window on the interior, which is when they’ll have to start accessing the room from the house via the dining room. All in all, it’s been a relatively easy progress to live through, with construction easily contained away from our day to day living spaces.

Although the yard is a complete mess – between the hot, dry weather and construction, the back yard has seen better days. And the front yard is feeling the effect of the hot, dry weather combined with Betsy beagle, who has dug herself a few new dusty lounge spots to replace her former under the sun room hang out. In short, there’s a lot of dust and dead grass out there right now. Thankfully, the zinnia patch is still going strong.

Which makes the butterflies immensely happy.