When Peggy and I bought the house in Baton Rouge, it had everything we wanted — three bedrooms, three baths, completely renovated, huge master closet, brick floor in the kitchen, covered parking. It checked all of the boxes except one.
We are outside people. Ten months out of the year you will find us sitting outside on the porch most evenings. The Baton Rouge house did not have a back porch, so the first thing we did upon moving into the house is add a covered back porch.
It’s a beautiful thing. There was a small half-moon concrete slab outside the back door, so we extended the paving to fill the gap between the two “wings” of the house and added pavers on top of the concrete. The slope of the roof didn’t allow us to just continue the roof line onto the porch covering, so we had to come up with a different plan. I called someone that was recommended by a friend, and we went and saw a sample of his work. It is a “floating” cover that is attached to the sides of the house. So the awning doesn’t disrupt the view, and so water doesn’t run off the front, it is inverted to be higher in the front and lower in the back. The rain (which is fairly common in south Louisiana) runs back toward the house and into the high capacity gutters. It is a really innovative design and it works like a charm.
During football season we put the television outside to watch the games. The two ceiling fans keep it from getting too hot and also help with the mosquitoes during certain times of the year. As it gets cooler we turn on the gas fire pit and enjoy the flames. We spend at least part of every evening out there.
This weekend we will do our home tailgating on the porch waiting for the LSU game to start. Tonight we fixed dinner and ate it out on the porch. It isn’t cool enough for the fire pit — though that doesn’t necessarily stop Peggy — but the fireflies are out in force. It is one of the many things that makes me love living here.
We’ll go out tomorrow for our Friday night date, and I bet we’ll end up back out on the porch. It’s just what we do.
