Building a Portico {the roof is up!}

Building a portico roof over your front door is an easy way to add curb appeal to your home. If you missed the start of our portico remodel, you can see the start of our new portico project here .  Today I am sharing the portico installation as well as the final reveal. It’s crazy how building a portico (a little roof) and two new columns can transform the front of a home!

This front door portico was installed at our old house and I recently updated it for 2021 as porticos are currently trending on google right now! With real estate being so expensive, many are opting to remodel or renovate and exterior renovations are on the rise. Hopefully you find some great ideas here today and are inspired to add a portico roof over your front door (or even a side or backdoor). 

Portico Installation

Here is the before:

I searched google, pinterest and the HGTV site for front entrance and portico designs and wow, there are so many ideas online! It’s easy to get overwhelmed with so many designs so I only saved designs that showed a front door similar to mine. We were not going to remodel the entire front of the house, just the front entrance. I didn’t make sense to save images that were nothing like our front entrance. 

The first step to installing a portico is to frame your stairs.

We framed around the existing cement step with 2×4’s and 2×10’s.

Initially, we were going to remove the cement step but decided that it was in decent shape and would provide a solid base for the new wider step, so we left the existing stairs.

How much does a portico cost?

The cost of building a portico depends on the size and building materials you use along with any manual labor you need to hire. Our portico roughly cost $2000 but we did a lot of the work ourselves. 

We chose a maintenance free vinyl decking to create our new step.

The vinyl decking was installed on top of the 2×4 frame.

Portico Benefits

Last week I shared portico designs that I showed varying roof sizes and styles depending on the type of front door. A portico not only provides curb appeal but a portico provides protection from the weather.  It’s always nice if it’s raining or snowing, to have a covered door while you are trying to get inside your home. This is a huge benefit!

Ultimately, we decided on the round italian style column portico.  The round columns added softness to the square portico roof line and provided visual appeal from the curb. 

We did enlist a little help with the install of the columns and roof. We DIY most everything around our home but occasionally, you need muscle for projects, more muscle than I have! ha.

I found it fascinating how they made a simple rectangular box as the supports for the columns. I have never seen a portico built before so this was a first for me. It’s always nice to see how things are actually made and what is underneath the “pretty” end product.

We used special brackets for fastening the wooden box to the house and new columns.

They used wooden shims on top of the columns to brace the support beams (rectangular box) until they got it level, then they removed them.

 

The front door portico looks kind of cool right?

Front door portico

As you can see our front door portico is taking shape and the added curb appeal from the new portico roof is amazing.

We decided to add a decorative inset on the front facing part of the new roof which I will share next week. It was a last minute decision but it took the roof line from nice to wow!

As you can see, it’s coming along nicely and the two toned shingles add so much color and texture to an otherwise, boring roof.

I love the side view of the portico over the front door. I love how the portico adds a little front porch space to the front entrance.

We still need to finish up the details and rip out the old door. The existing door is a solid wood gorgeous door with beautiful detail but unfortunately, that’s about all it has to offer. It basically lets in all the cold air during the winter months and you can see the outside through the cracks when you walk by it. Not good! I have plans for that door though, possibly a DIY headboard for our master bedroom. Stay tuned, the portico reveal is soon!

UPDATE: See our new Portico REVEAL! It’s finished!