COVID had Chip and Betsy Tucker thinking things over after living in this area for four decades. A combination of practicality and the post-pandemic real estate market made them consider their next move. Was it time for a smaller house? A transition to one-floor living? The Tuckers began exploring their options, and found a 1920s stucco house in the Rose Hill neighborhood that became their next home.
“This house appealed to us,” says Chip Tucker. “I liked its plain style. We know this neighborhood—we’ve been attending the Quaker meeting here for 40 years. Some of our neighbors have been here for years. And we can walk to downtown.”
The Tuckers bought the house in 2022 as a rental, and in 2024 they hired Jobes Builders and architect Joey Laughlin to make some upgrades and renovations before the couple moved in. Their biggest ask: a larger outdoor living space. “In this climate, you can be outside three seasons a year,” says Tucker. “We wanted a place we could live in, and entertain in.”
The existing screened porch, part of an addition done in 2003, wasn’t much more than a back entry and mud room. “The clients wanted a real living space,” says Laughlin. “We wanted to respect the vernacular of the house, but it didn’t have to be the same style.”
Laughlin and Tucker played around with various sizes for the porch’s expanded concrete footprint. They wanted to create a large enough space for living and entertaining without impinging too much on the existing garden, including a decades-old holly and a lovely three-story weeping cherry tree.
Laughlin also experimented with various designs for the roof, finally settling on a slant that mirrors the pitch of the adjoining roof, sloping up to the outer edge to bring in light and enlarge the view. (“I liked this design because it was the most unusual looking,” says Tucker.) A valley forms where the porch roof meets the house, and a field-fabricated box gutter collects and sheds rainwater into a galvanized round downspout (the Tuckers have a rain barrel on the other side of the house).
Because the lot is small (about .2 acres), Laughlin designed the porch to balance openness and privacy. To the west, parallel to the street, a 3-foot-high wall of tongue-and-groove slats provides some privacy, with full screening above; to the east, with a neighbor’s house only yards away, the tongue-and-groove wall is 7 feet high, with two vertical louvered panels and screening above to allow for light and air flow. The northern side is floor-to-ceiling screening, with a door providing access to the garden.
The porch’s internal framing, with horizontals at 3 and 7 feet, supports the screening and creates a rhythmic feeling. It’s also practical, as Laughlin notes: The inside rail is the perfect height to hold people’s drinks, and recessed lighting underneath it provides muted light for safety without glare that would attract insects. Because the north wall is so open, a steel rod cross brace is required for lateral stability; its shape adds an aesthetic contrast to the rectangular grid of columns and rails.
The porch walls are painted a muted gray-blue inside and out, which creates a quiet weathered feeling like a seaside cottage. Laughlin says the color was chosen to complement the main building. He calls it “a more muted, less saturated cousin to the sea-green of the existing house.”
On the porch ceiling, the cedar planking was left unfinished, and its warm golden beige lightens the space. Both roof and ceiling extend out past the walls to add to the feeling of integrating indoors and outdoors. On the porch roof is an unobtrusive solar installation (Jobes Builders is known for its dedication to energy-efficient and sustainable projects).
The Tuckers’ new space has its practical touches as well. An entryway to both the kitchen and new porch is now where the former screened porch was. Its outer wall has become a divider with a countertop oven for preparing and serving food; it is topped with repurposed soapstone that a former owner left stacked in the yard. “I cook out here all year round,” Tucker notes—especially helpful when he’s preparing fish.
In line with their taste for simplicity and sustainability, the Tuckers have furnished their porch space eclectically. A suite of sea-green metal outdoor furniture—a pair of loveseats and a round glass-topped dining set—coexists with a vintage Amish rocking chair and a glass-topped coffee table from their former home. The result is both minimalistic and homey—comfort without a lot of fuss. Perhaps the best description is timeless.
