Adding a Front Porch Storage Closet
When one door closes, another one… well, gets installed.
A little while back, we closed off the door from the living room to the front porch. It made the inside of the house make so much more sense, but it also left us with this awkward, closed-in section on the porch that didn’t really have a purpose anymore.
Then when we had the house bricked, we decided to go ahead and have that section fully enclosed to help secure the pool area, and that’s when the idea shifted from “awkward leftover space” to something actually useful. Instead of letting it sit there, we finished it out and turned it into a storage closet for yard tools, pool floats, chairs, and all the random outdoor things that never seem to have a home.
We reused the same door that came out of the living room, which felt right for this house, and the guys who did the work really went above and beyond. The wood they used is grooved plywood paneling, sometimes called T1-11 siding, and they didn’t just slap it up and call it done. They framed everything out cleanly, added trim, and made it look intentional instead of like an afterthought, which I honestly did not expect at that level.
Originally, I thought we would paint it to match everything else, but once it was finished, it actually blended in really well with the porch flooring and railing. It feels simple and cohesive in a way that works with the house, so for now, we’re just going to clean it up and leave it as is and let it be part of the overall look instead of forcing it to match something else.
The next step is to scrape the ceiling and paint it haint blue and then seal everything in. The battle with wasps has already begun this season, and making sure this closet doesnt become a safe haven for them is priority number one.
The biggest surprise is how much space it actually has inside. It looks like a small closet from the outside, but it easily fits the push mower, weed eater, pool floats, chairs, and umbrellas without feeling crammed. It’s one of those spaces that quietly solves a bunch of little problems all at once.
And like every single project we have taken on here, it cost more than we expected and took longer than we thought it would, but it also turned out exactly how we hoped. It feels finished, it feels useful, and it makes the house function just a little bit better, which is really the whole point of all of this.
