The contractor came yesterday to give us some options for replacing the front porch and building a new back stoop. As he explained the problems of our current 1938 house doors, it was an "Aha" moment for us. The front porch door used to swing inwards, getting in the way of the storm door, which swings outwards. We took off the porch door. It could not swing outward because there was no place to stand to avoid the sweep of the door.

The back door is worse. The staircase landing for the basement stairs leading to the back door gives us very little space to stand in when opening the door, which swings inward. There are two steps leading down from the kitchen, so I often stand on one of those. He said the outside cement step does not conform to code and we should have a 4 by 4 foot (I think) porch area outside instead of the tiny cement step that we have now. Hard telling how old that step is - we saw pix from the 50s when it was there.

We've had this house for 19 years and this is the first time we've made a major change to the outside, other than maintenance (new roof, shutters, windows, etc)

It is a bit daunting to try to figure out what kind of porch will look good on a house this old and this small. (The footprint is about 1K square feet.) But it will definitely feel good to have safe entrances.

Funny how we just lived with the awkwardness all these years.