Front Porch Project - Phase 1

This is the front porch and entryway after I've trued up the edges of the step. It wasn't a 90 degree angle and it wasn't square.

During my last week off, I started working on my front porch. I've never liked the surface of our front porch, it was poured concrete and was not very pretty. A couple of years ago, I purchased a couple of large outdoor carpets and put on it and it looked okay.

Last summer, I decided I wanted to put down travertine (a natural stone) for the surface. Summertime is too hot to work outdoors in Florida (for me) and so I put it off. The fall had me working on the boat a lot to prepare for this winter's Bahamas trip, so that left this late winter and spring to do the porch.

First off was buying the Travertine. I needed about 220 sq feet. I could buy it for about 6 bucks a square foot OR if I was willing to buy a whole crate (about 350 square feet), I could get it for 2 bucks a square foot. That was a no brainer, so I bought a crate of Travertine and had it delivered to the house (it weighed 2200 pounds). After I got back from the Atlanta race, I started in on the project.

First up was leveling and truing the surface. Whomever poured the 'upper' part of the porch did a real crappy job of making sure everything was at right angles, so I had to spend a pretty good amount of time preparing the surface and especially getting the edge of the step true. I had decided that rather than butting the tiles where the vertical meets the horizontal at the steps I would put in a nice trim piece that would really make it look custom. This decision cost me about a days worth of prep because the trip piece doesn't span a large area, so the imperfections of the steps had to be fixed.

Then, I decided that I needed some accents in the field tiles, so I looked all over town for what I wanted (pillow glass that matches the color of the front doors) and couldn't find it anywhere. So, I ordered it on the internet.

With all my supplies in hand, I started laying out the tile. This step takes a long time, but make for a good job, so I spent a lot of time making sure everything was laid out perfectly.

With 2 days of driving rain in the middle of the job, it lasted much longer than I wanted, but on Sunday, I finally grouted the 1/16ths inch grout lines and phase one is complete. I now have the MUCH larger area to do that spans the front of the house, but with phase 1 under my belt, I expect that phase 2 will go quite fast (I hope). I have to work through the Martinsville race, so it'll be the first week in April before I get started on it.

The completed "phase one" with the front doors open.

You can see part of the larger porch area here. I'll match the completed area for the main porch during phase 2.

You can see the pillow glass accents pretty good in the larger version of this photo.