Porches and entrances

Start with the rules, because they decide the shape. A porch at the front of a house is generally exempt from planning if the floor area stays within two square metres, the roof stays low enough, a flat roof no higher than about three metres and a pitched roof no higher than about four, and it does not sit within two metres of the boundary with a public road. That last one catches people on tight sites in towns. Go over any of those and you are into a planning application, which is fine, but it changes the timeline and you want to know that in week one rather than week six. Two square metres is small, so every centimetre is planned: the outward swing of the new front door, the inward swing of the old one, and whether there is room for both to open at once. That is the real trick of a porch. It works as a draught lobby only when both doors are never open at the same time, so we set the depth so a person and a buggy can stand between them with both closed. Then the build itself. It is a real structure, not a conservatory bolted to the wall: a foundation dug below frost, a damp proof course tied into the house DPC, cavity or insulated blockwork, a lintel over the opening, and a roof that is flashed properly where it meets the house wall. Nine out of ten leaking porches leak at that junction, because someone smeared sealant across the render instead of cutting a chase and dressing lead into it. Inside, the floor is laid to drain outward and tiled in something that survives wet boots, and the threshold is set flush or near flush so nobody trips going in with an armful of shopping. Power and a light on a sensor go in before the plaster, because chasing them in afterwards means repainting the whole front of the house.

Making it look like it was always there

A porch that reads as an add on is worse than no porch. We match the render finish, the sills, the fascia line and the roof material to the house, carry the existing string course or plinth across it, and keep the glazing proportions in line with the windows either side. On an older house that usually means a pitched, tiled roof and a solid base with glazing above. On a newer estate house a flat roof with a slim aluminium frame often sits better. Either way you are adding to the front elevation, which is the part of the house that sets its value, so it is worth drawing before it is built.