Seattle’s Porch.com Simplifies the Home Renovation Process
By Lauren Mang June 20, 2014

This article originally appeared in the July 2014 issue of Seattle magazine.
Tackling a bathroom renovation? Want to see what your neighbor did with hers—and what she paid? Sign up for the Eastlake-based home improvement site Porch.com, the brainchild of CEO Matt Ehrlichman, to search a database of more than 1.5 million professionals—plumbers, carpenters, interior decorators—to find the right person to take on your task. In grand “keeping up with the Joneses” fashion, your gratis membership to Porch gains you access to pictures, project cost, experts chosen and other details about home-improvement jobs completed in your area (including your neighbor’s reno), not to mention LinkedIn-style endorsements of those experts from other Porch users. Scour the site for advice and how-tos, maintenance reminders and plentiful project photos that you can then save to your “scrapbook” for inspiration. And look for the handy-dandy service inside Lowe’s Home Improvement stores, too, where you can browse its online bounty of pros via Lowe’s employee mobile devices and in-store terminals.