the rear porch platform ...

The house has a large rear screened-in porch: at least 15' x 28'. However it was rendered mostly unusable by the previous owners. This was mainly because to cover a set of basement (access/egress) stairs they had built a 10'x10' platform which occupied the center of the porch rendering almost all of the surrounding space non-functional.
Here's how it looked on the day of viewing:









The space on the far side of the platform didn't get used because of this abomination:









Clearly intended to be "a fountain", and I use that term generously, it was a pile of rubble held together with cement and various colours of paint. I intended to demolish it soon after moving in, this got moved up the list when my cats decided it was the biggest cat litter tray they had ever found! When I took the sledge hammer to it, I couldn't believe how much stone came out of that pile. It was cathartic however and I got to use a cement mixer and heave 80lb bags of ready mix, surely any girls idea of fun.

But I digress. So you saw how it was before. I had looked up under the platform from the basement (the door leaks water in when it rains, has to be coming from under the ground). The porch had originally just been dirt and then they had poured a concrete slab and not really squared off the edges so the lip to place a door was not the greatest.
I decided last weekend that enough was enough and it was the weekend when the platform had to go. Plan was to take the platform apart, look at the situation and use the lumber from the platform to make a door.

Halfway through taking it apart it looked like this:









The platform was built "sturdily". 10ft 2'x6's every 16 on center gave me more lumber than I knew what to do with. I had wanted to do a hatch door with a continuous hinge mounted into the concrete but I didn't like the state of the the cement and decided on a drop-in door. Two actually, to keep them reasonable to lift.
I lucked out as the drop from the "floor" level of the concrete to the usable part of the lip was approx 6". Looked like I could get away with reusing the 2"x6"s. So I built a frame with 2x6s and topped it with the plywood that had been part of the floor of the platform.

About 3/4s of the way through it looked like this:









So far, so good and going smoothly. Just had to cut in some recessed handles ($4 each from HD or Lowes), add some rubber feet (2-pack for 78c x 4) and then paint them. I chose to paint with some texture as the porch can collect some moisture. Paint: $11.98 for a quart of exterior satin latex and $4.98 for some sand/texture (quartz). The quartz makes the paint into slurry so after a coat of primer, I just managed to get one coat and a touch up out of a quart!

Looks pretty good, me thinks and totally opens up the whole porch area, just need to arrange the furniture:


So much water had leaked into the stairwell that the sill in the door well had almost totally rotted away over the 58 years since the house was built. The previous (also the original) owner's approach was to slap on cement and make cement dams, really to no avail. Extending the downspouts away from the house and installing a 28' run of gutter on the back of the porch roof helped immensely. So I lifted the remnants of the sill out and then dug out some perfect humus to reveal a nice 5-3/4"-wide channel. So new on the project list is installing a new sill, looks like "2"x 5-3/4" will do it. Just wondering how to customize it for run off - don't want the runoff to just trickle underneath the sill as before, would rather ti was encouraged to run towards a near by drain to the sump pump.
More chores but all good progress and finally getting to use the WHOLE of the porch is very exciting (and relaxing). The porch has really had an upgrade this summer with the platform removed and the screened walls painted and installed with new screening.