The owner of Ninfa’s was a client who had previously hired us to design houses in Houston, Texas and Aspen, Colorado. He contacted us to design a screened porch to replace the temporary tent that he had purchased from Amazon for $900.00 (DIY assembly).

He requested that it be a ‘no frills’ porch; just an exposed wooden structure to seat roughly 36 customers. Working with Brad Dougherty, a structural engineer, it was quickly determined that an exposed wood framed building would require steel to facilitate lateral stability. Furthermore, once we determined that neither timber columns nor laminated power beams used vertically were available, the structure would have to be a wood-clad steel structure. Hmm.

We met with the general contractor’s framing crew to make sure that they knew that every piece of framing lumber (2x4 – 2x12) was actually going to be the finished material, i.e., not clad with plywood, sheetrock, or anything else. As a result, this ‘no frills’ screened porch was more akin to an occupiable wood cabinet. In order to assure coordination, the general contractor asked us to produce a shop drawing for the assembly, that is, a document identifying the size and placement of every piece of wood material.

The shop drawing produced was coordinated with the structural drawings to identify the specific connections between steel columns, steel flitches, wood rafters, and wood cladding. Detailing included the coordination of screen installation with rolled up storm screens which could be lowered during blowing rain, allowing the porch to be used during inclemency.