One of the big factors when we initially bought the property was the well-established garden; it’s an older property and it gave us plenty of space to raise our three children.
The support lintel above the opening of the existing porch seems to have been a little short and some cracks were forming around the one end of the lintel.
On top of this, the brick lintel just below the main lintel started to sag.
The solution seemingly was to put the roof trusses on support pillars and replace the existing lintel with a steel I-beam.
Since the existing porch was slightly too small for our needs to host ‘outside’, this gave us the opportunity to enclose the patio with aluminium sliding-stacking doors, merging the outside with the inside.
It being quite an intensive project to replace the lintel, we decided to expand the project to the next-door living room as well, replacing the old steel frame windows with sliding-stacking doors and utilising a lengthy 9m I-beam in one go. It being an older north-facing house, we are now also enjoying a much warmer living/dining room area with the expanded window real estate and better seal the more modern stacking doors provide.