You're going to love that porch! We have one that is 40x8 with a 15 x8 dogleg on the kitchen end. It has a handrail with standard the whole length and people hover around it (mainly because it provides a great place to sit a drink, I think). Separated from that one is a 30x8 on the back of the house that is to double in size this year if all goes well.
Folks tend to love porches. They bring back a buried memory of when people used them for their intended purposes, not just to make an entryway look better. Many of my best childhood memories involve porches, the best of which was when the extended family got together to make/eat ice cream...in hand-turned churns with a kid sitting on the top to weigh it down, with a towel to insulate his/her rear from the cold. The worst memories usually involved the porch as the origin for many a trip to cut my own plum switch. I don't think I was ever abused, but I learned many valuable lessons about errant behavior from parents that really cared. I miss that part of our current society...but that's for another topic some other time.
May just be that it goes as far back as when primitive man sat around fires, I don't know...it just seems like a house is missing something important when there isn't a porch.
