The #1 one thing on our wish list for the next place we moved was a porch. This was before we decided on a tiny house–especially a camper. Unfortunately, our camper didn’t have a good awning. Luke didn’t want to try it out while we were up north and it end up not going back down, so we decided to wait until we got down to Florida before we really tried it. Well, Luke got it up in the first couple days of us being down here! The bad thing was, the top layer of it crumbled away with the wind. That was okay, we just used the bottom layer for the past few weeks. When the wind caught it, there were some more slight rips, the water pooled up in it when it rained, and when the wind blew hard enough it shook our camper! We knew we were lucky to even have it in the first place, and we were on borrowed time until we could replace or repair it. Fast forward to yesterday, we got this pop-up screen tent (Tailgaterz Magnetic Screen House ) to use as our porch! (Thank you, Austins!) We figured out that we could tuck it under the awning and still be able to use the door– it jutted off of the concrete a little more than we would have liked, but it was fine. Luke noticed that one of the bolt attachments were looking pretty loose, but we figured we would just ignore it until it broke.
We went around back to grab one of the picnic tables and sure enough, we heard a loud snap! So now it was time to put the pop-up tent half down and roll the awning back up. This was easier said than done, and Luke luckily still has all of his fingers. 🙂 We used some duct tape to get it to sit up high enough so we could open our door, along with sticking the rusty bolts back in. The combination of a water-damaged wall and rusted out screws caused this… we weren’t surprised but it was still annoying.
In the end, we have our porch! We moved it to the side and staked it down well. It’s not perfect at keeping all the bugs out, but it helps a bit! Our dream has come true– even if it was the super low-budget version. It’s not perfect, but it’s ours and we love it.