DIY: How to Make a Portico (2024)

Our home was built in 1900. It’s an old house, really old, at least by American standards. And somewhere along the way a two car garage was added. It’s hard to say exactly when, but it must have been a long time ago. The Planning and Zoning department of the city today would never have signed off on it because it sat just off to the side of the backyard.

I have to say, with an older home it’s pretty nice to have a two car garage. But in this case, it was a huge eyesore that looked out of place and took away from the lush green backyard. So we decided to do something about it.

Why we decided to add a portico to our garage side door

The first thing we did was remove a lot of overgrown landscaping around the garage and the entire property. We created more of an open backyard, but then the garage became the focal point, which was also visible from the dining room and the kitchen. So like a lot of house-related problems, we quickly realized that painting the garage was part of the answer.

Since the exterior of the house was white, we decided to paint the garage black, including the side door. Best decision ever. With just black paint, it made a huge difference, but still, we kept thinking we needed something else to make it look more attractive and increase our home’s curb appeal. You can see the before here.

I started noticing porticos on houses in our area and then quickly moved to Pinterest for more inspiration. I created a Pinterest board just for Porticos. There were so many great options, but since this was the garage it was the perfect place for a simple design. Our first idea included a galvanized corrugated metal roof, but that proved to be impractical. We still like the idea, but finding the material in our area was not easy and then finding someone to cut it to the right size was even more difficult. So we did what we always do in these situations.

We improvised and decided a portico would work. We came up with the design and sketched it out. And when buying the wood and other materials, we found a bundle of cedarwood shingles for less than $20 at Home Depot. Done. The leftover shingles were used for kindling wood in our outdoor fire pit.

What is a portico?

A portico is a little roof or in more technical terms an architectural feature of a structure consisting of a roof supported by columns leading to the front entrance of a building. 

What is the purpose of adding a portico?

Adding a portico is a great way to shield the entrance of a home or building from rain, sleet or snow. It helps keep it relatively dry. It also adds an architectural feature that defines an entryway.

The tools you’ll need to build a portico

• Cordless screwdriver/drill and drill bits
• Tape measure
• Saw (mitre saw, table saw, or circular hand saw)
• Level
• Paintbrush

Materials used for building a portico

The first step was buying all the materials. We started with a unique size of wood we got from Home Depot. You do kind of have to look for it as it’s not common and always seems to be in a different place. The actual dimensions are 3 1/2″ wide by 1″ thick (yes, 1″ and not the normal 3/4″). You could use regular 2″ X 4″s but we thought these look just a bit more substantial. 

• Wood for frame
• Wood for roof
• Cedar shingles
• 2″ screws
• Waterproof spackle or wood filler
• Paint
• Finish nails for cedar shingles

How to build a portico

1. From left to right, We created an L shape with two pieces of wood – one screwed to the garage and the other screwed to the top of the piece attached to the garage.
2. Next, we created a brace at a 45-degree angle. Then we built a frame around the braces in the shape of a box. Again, utilizing 45-degree angles for the corners.
3. The screws are all inset just enough so that patching and sanding is easy. We usually drill 1/4″ deep pocket holes that are about the same size as the head of a screw so that it sinks in easily without splitting the wood.
4. Once we built the frame around it, we had to build the braces that create the slope of the roof or the roof line. The only tricky part was determining the angle of the slope of the roof. Not being a contractor, after trial and error several times at different degrees, we settled on a 25-degree slope for the portico roof. This provided a cohesive look with the roof of the garage.
5. Once the braces were attached to the garage and the frame, we then used slats of 3/4″ pine for the roof structure. Another option would have been a sheet of plywood. But that would have required another trip to Home Depot so we used the wood we had.
6. We filled in all the screw holes with waterproof sparckle and any gaps or imperfections in the wood. Next we sanded everything to our desired smoothness. 
7. Once the roof was on, we laid the shingles starting at the bottom and working our way to the top. Not seen in the photo here is a little trim detail. To finish the roof, we attached a piece of molding at the top where the shingles meet the garage. We also painted that black. The molding closed the small gap between the end of the shingles and the garage and prevents rain and melting snow from dripping through.

The finishing touches

In front of the entry door to the garage was grass/dirt. We cleared and leveled a path and used rectangular concrete pavers leading up to the garage door. We considered using brick steps but thought the concrete pavers were a better choice for the overall look. 

Since there were no rain gutters on the garage, we also dug a small shallow trench about two feet wide along the side of the garage and filled it in with gray pea gravel to keep it from being a constant mud puddle after bad weather or melting snow from the garage roof.

A portico helped define this space and added curb appeal and so did the industrial guard sconce from Barn Light Electric

Having a white house and a black garage makes it so much fun to decorate for the holidays. Everything looks good with black! We especially love the Atomic Industrial Guard Sconce from Barn Light Electric. We loved it so much that we added two more wall sconces for the back of our house. These mums are fading fast, almost time for winter plantings out here!

We also added a potting area at the back of the garage

Behind the back of the garage was an open area that wasn’t being used for anything so we decided to make a potting area. We first cleared the grass and filled it in with gray pea gravel. We had found some long planks that had washed a shore during Hurricaine Sandy and decided to use them for shelves. We bought brackets, cut the planks to the right length, and used the shelves to store all of our extra pots and supplies. 

Here’s what it looked like before we got started

Other options for porticos if you don’t want to DIY a portico

I love Brooke’s portico. It’s a fairly reasonably priced solution without having to DIY it! It looks great and provides coverage for entering the door in the rain and it adds architectural detail. She also added the screen door recently and she never misses an opportunity to add a detail like the Beach sign.