Porch Progress

Work on the porch progresses. It is perhaps a bit slower than I anticipated from the outset, but it is shaping up like a quality piece of work. Behold the state of things as of the end of this week:

We have the understructure completed as far as I can see. It is quite solidly build and should provide an excellent base for the decking that will be installed next week.

Earlier this week, things were a bit more chaotic, but gradually improved. When we left for our weekend getaway, we still had a porch to walk up to, but it had no railings, and the load-bearing posts were stripped down to bare wood and primed. That was a late development: they spent the few days before priming wrapped in tar paper because it was cold and raining - not good conditions for painting.

The decking was torn up early this week. We came home one day and half the porch was gone! The next day there wasn't anything left, and we have been coming in and out of the back door ever since.

Behold the interesting patch job that someone did some years back to try and reinforce the north end. It's not a bad job, actually, but was only a stop-gap measure. This happens to be in the neighborhood of where the clothes dryer vents out, so the gradual rotting out could have been anticipated. Why they didn't move the dryer vent at the same time of this reinforcement is a mystery to me. I will admit I haven't fixed it yet myself, but it is high on my to-do list.


Sometime in the past the house was owned by a smoker that really thought nothing of dropping the butts through the cracks at the front door. As if lead paint chips weren't enough to worry about.

The end of tearing things apart, and the start of rebuilding. The posts, incidentally, are free-hanging: suspended from above with a gap beneath them. We have temporary struts holding up the roof, which we have thankfully avoided hitting with our cars thus far.