This will be a quick one, compared to our kitchen saga. But it actually took longer to complete this pantry porch in calendar time. We installed a bit of this, and filled a hole with a dab of that, until it was done, along with finishing the work in the kitchen this pantry porch will serve.

First thing, we demolished the steel door to your death, filled in the wall with framing, fixed the electricity, insulated, and covered the wall with drywall. That wall faces due north, so losing some sunlight won’t be a problem. Blank walls are valuable, too, a concept that seems to have escaped open-concept devotees lately. We extended the fascia board that runs around the room on that wall, too. You can espy the DWV (drain, waste, vent) pipe heading down from the bathroom upstairs, heading for the carhole basement where the Geyser of Excrement amusement park is located.

We added to the ad hoc framing overhead to get backing every 16″ or so, and put up an honest to god ceiling, one of the few in the house. The rest are like remodeling club sandwiches, with layers of plaster and plywood and nicotine and strapping and mildew and drywall added over the years.

There’s a clue in the last picture, if you look for it. That’s my spare heir, screwing up on the job. On the right, there’s a 2×4 block affixed near the top of the wall. That’s a good drywall trick for working with only a little help, or when you’re on your own. That block is located about 1″ below the firring strip (strapping to some folks, and furring to others) that the drywall will be screwed to. We made a giant t-square out of two pieces of strapping (1×3 utility grade lumber) as well. The t-square leg is slightly longer than the distance from the floor to the ceiling. The cross-piece is about three feet long. We cut the drywall to the correct length, tuck one end above the 2×4 cleat, swing the other side up into place, and then jam the t-square under the drywall sheet to hold up the end opposite the cleat. If you make the t-square a little long, you can jam it in place with a little bow in it. That way, it pins the drywall sheet tight to the ceiling framing, and it won’t move. After you screw up some more, you kick out the bottom of the t-square, and remove the cleat. Rinse and repeat.

Most of the old kitchen cabinets were in pretty rough shape, but we salvaged the best of them and installed them along the walls in an L shape. I see that fall is coming into view. We’re putting our hanging baskets inside at night to avoid the frost, and hanging them out again in the morning. I also see the jungle cat approves of this method of extending the summer a little.

The original porch had a deck made from tongue and groove fir, an excellent material. Someone eventually screwed a layer of 3/4″ thick exterior plywood over the fir deck, another excellent material. Then they stapled a layer of screaming green astroturf carpet over the floor. Not an excellent material. But the porch does get wet-ish from time to time. Wind-blown rain sometimes finds its way in, despite the overhangs outside. The floor is very stiff, and exterior ply makes a good tile underlayment. We’ll tile it so any water isn’t a problem.

My wife and I like Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. I’ve read the book the movie is base on, too, but it’s not as amusing as the movie. We often make a joke about wanting just four little pieces of flagstone somewhere in the house.

Well, we kind of found them, so we can stop joking about it now, I guess. We were at the orange place or the blue place, I forget which, and they had some tile they didn’t want to sell anymore because it wasn’t ugly enough, and they marked it down to near nothing. So we scarfed it up and layed it down, brother.

It’s slate-ish, not slate, but it looks nice and gets the job done.

We used the pantry porch as an ad hoc instant kitchen whenever the going got rough in the kitchen. The porch has a western exposure, so in the fall/early winter months, when the leaves are off the trees, it’s like a little hothouse.

We salvaged what we could of the post-formed counters from the kitchen, and used them to cap off the cabinets. We boxed in the pipe, and eventually put a shelf on top of the cabinets on the far wall. Then we painted the place to match the rest of the house.

It’s all screened in, and the windows stand open from about April to October. They’re shielded from the weather by an overhang.

I’ve read that in Asian countries, it’s traditional to build your house on the worst part of your lot, so that you don’t disturb the best part with your construction. You improve the bad parts, and keep the good parts. In the US, the house always goes on the best part of the lot. I think this concept deserves more attention. Americans could help themselves more if they simply improved the bad parts of their house, instead of adding more stuff to the good parts. Just keeping things in good repair is a prime example of the concept, one that’s usually overlooked.

I hereby promise that if I find any good parts in my house, I’ll keep well clear of them, and work on something bad. There’s an inexhaustible supply of that.