How to Build an Old Fashioned Wooden Front Porch

Building an old-fashioned front porch is more about the detail than the framing. Old-fashioned front porches stem from Victorian type of architecture, with scrollwork, ornate posts or columns, elaborate trim boards and railings with decorative spindles. Styles varied by region, but porches were common in cities and towns until the middle of the 1900s, when automobiles and suburban developments took over. Now porches are coming back and many homeowners are adding them. You can still make an old-fashioned wooden porch now with some modern techniques such as prepared posts and columns, and trim.

Posts or columns
Wooden flooring, tongue-and-groove
Table saw
Galvanized finishing nails
Hammer
1-by-4 or 1-by-6-inch trim boards
Decorative scrollwork
Railings and spindles
Corbels or brackets

Instructions

- 1
  Build an old-fashioned wooden porch with decorative posts or columns to support the roof. Use posts with sides rounded in various combinations, large round columns with decorative bases and tops or Craftsman style supports tapered from a wide bottom to the top. Match these to the style of house. Big two-story houses look best with columns, one-story houses with round or Craftsman posts.
- 2
  Make a wooden floor with tongue-and-groove flooring. Install this perpendicular to the house wall, over a wooden frame of side bands and floor joists. Cut a groove off one plank with a table saw to start the flooring with a smooth edge. Nail flooring to joists with galvanized finishing nails driven diagonally with a hammer through the tongue. Trim the tongue off the last plank. Add 1-by-4 or 1-by-6-inch trim boards around the edges as an option.
- 3
  Trim the roof with decorative scrollwork under the end peak of a gable roof or with scrollwork called spandrels along the edges of roof eaves or the sloped rakes of gable roofs. Fasten these to the fascia or facing boards on the roof edges with nails or screws. Buy these from roofing suppliers. They come in a variety of styles, with decorative spindles, fan-shaped corner trims or ornate scroll designs.
- 4
  Put wooden railings between the posts, typically with top and bottom horizontal rails between the posts with vertical spindles between the rails. Use simple square spindles for a basic farmhouse look, rounded spindles for a more Victorian style or ornate shaped spindles. Use either rectangular railing tops and bottoms or boards milled with rounded edges such as stair handrails.
- 5
  Use corbels and brackets under roof framing. These are similar because one side fastens to a wall or post and the other side to the bottom of the roof frame, but corbels are short and brackets are large and generally extend past the roof line. Install these between a house wall and the roof frame or on either side of a post between the post and bottom of the roof frame.

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