Porch Update

As Brynna would say, "We hafve wails? They gween?" Yes, B, we now have rails, and they are green.







I know we now have a epic battle of color raging across the facade right now. Pink will lose, it is just a matter of time. It may well at this point require until the spring, however, because it is difficult to wage war with frozen paint.

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.

Porch Rebuilding, continued

Here's to spending lots of money stimulating the local building industry! It is money well spent. You may recall from two weeks ago my adventures in getting replicas of our porch railing balusters custom turned. The results are quite nice:




If anyone is in need of some wood turning 'round these parts, I can wholeheartedly recommend this guy. Quick turnaround and obviously skilled. He also has plenty of knowledge on proper construction of things like railings that should ensure these last for another 100 years of New Hampshire weather.

Today my carpenter started tearing things apart. Good riddance to the old railings - may they meet a quick end in a properly maintained and scrubbed incinerator. He also started stripping the paint on the posts, which will be restored in place. He is using a chemical stripper that sets up overnight and gradually turns the paint to goo:


We are aiming to restore the dark green color that existed before someone thought it a good idea to slather purple overtop. Makes for an interesting pattern at least.

The cheap lattice covering the underside also disappeared today. It allows one a nice closeup look at the brilliance of venting the clothes drier directly under the porch:



Notice also how all the joists have had sisters bolted to them to support their crumbling strength. And what is that? 4x4s of pressure-treated sitting on cinderblocks!

We are deeply looking forward to this project being finished. The process is not painful at all so far (much less than, say, a kitchen renovation), we're just hoping to have a chance to enjoy it for a brief time before it is covered in snow.

Porch Rebuilding

When we bought our house, we knew that the porch was not in great shape. One side of the porch is significantly, uh, bouncier than the other. The dryer, for whatever reason, was plumbed to vent directly under that corner of the porch. The fact that you can look underneath and see flagging supports, buttressed joists, and other patchwork fixes does not inspire confidence. Last fall we had a significant chunk of one of the posts replaced with new wood, because it was rotted through and through, and we didn't fancy having the porch roof collapse after a heavy snowstorm. The front steps leading up to the porch are a terrible hack-job of carpentry, and the hand rails on either side wouldn't survive a swift kick.

Of particular concern is the paint on the decking, balusters, railings, and posts: it is cracking and chipping all over the place. Seeing as the house was built in 1916, it is almost certain that at least the lowest coat is lead-based. The railing is just about at the height of Brynna's mouth which, needless to say, makes us nervous. Properly stripping and lead-abating all those spindles, the posts, the decking, and the rest would be the work of an army for the next five years. It is just as well, the bottom section of just about every single baluster is rotted through and through. Here's one that I ripped out, quite literally, with my bare hands:




See what I mean?

I guess I can't fault the balusters all that much - they are nearly 100 years old, and clearly the purple paint job was not very well done. They are most definitely finished, and not worth salvaging. Neither is the decking, nor the framework underneath, nor the steps attached to it. The posts are in decent shape, as are the upper decorative railings and the roof itself.

So, we have resolved this fall to rebuild the porch. In a way, the dilapidated state of things makes our choices pretty clear: tear out anything suspect and build new. Our carpenter and I had already agreed on recycled plastic decking, so that it need never be painted again. The frame underneath would get a few new footings and joists 12" on center for additional rigidity. The load-bearing posts will get stripped in place to bare wood and refinished properly.

(This is a job that I would gladly undertake on my own. It's within my capabilities, would give me great satisfaction in the doing and in the observing, and would let me make good use of and expand my tools. Alas, I have gradually come to accept that ability and opportunity are two very different things and, if I want this job started and finished in the next ten years, I really will have to pay someone else to do it)

A sticking point, however, were the balusters. It turns out that our railings are a lot lower than code requires these days, so we could find no suitable replacements in any catalog that were short enough that offered even a similar-looking profile. Our carpenter shopped it around to a handful of places, and came back with costs averaging about $50 each. Considering that there are 80+ spindles to replace, that comes to a rather eye-popping total.

When our carpenter's latest lead didn't pan out, I took matters into my own hands. I yanked one spindle free, scraped it clean of most of its paint, and measured it out. As an engineer, creating models of existing parts it something I'm rather experienced at. Besides, I had just recently bought a set of 12" Mitutoyo dial calipers second-hand from a guy in the area, and this gave me a fine excuse to use them. After sketching out the key dimensions on paper, I created a detailed model of the part in Pro/E, a CAD package I use daily. From this I created a 1:1 drawing, which I then sent to several area woodsmiths for a quotation.


One wood turner not far from Concord responded favorably and, after some back and forth about this and that detail of form, construction, and material, etc., we came to a deal that was about half what we had been seeing. The new balusters will be nearly identical copies, authentic to the time period, plantation-raised mahogany that should well last another 100 years. I considered that a few hours well spent!