The Legacy of Ugly Porches
Jerry came by Saturday to replace my service panel and wire up the upstairs. While he was doing that I went ahead and pulled down the kitchen ceiling so he could get to the wires beneath. The ceiling was covered in wood paneling that was nailed and glued to 1/4" plywood that was nailed to furring strips attached to the joists. Someone put a lot of work into making a very ugly ceiling.
Before he came, I prepared by tearing out the rest of the kitchen closet thing so he could run all the wires from the basement up the chase to the second floor. I uncovered the old back doorway form when the house originally ended at the kitchen. There's a door shaped opening in the brick and a space above it for a transom window. Then it was covered by paneling and drywall when it was turned into a closet. The original window for the back of the house was turned into a big doorway to the laundry room.
When Jerry cut a hole in the laundry room ceiling, you could see that above that drywall was a painted tongue and groove wood slat roof. This was the house's original porch. At some point they turned the porch into an extension of the house. That's why every house on my block has the same shaped extension on their house because they all did it. But then everyone added a porch behind that and everyone has some different half-assed, screwed up porch behind their house. It's such an ugly mess out there.