The Porch is baking and so are we.

• The weekend started with grocery shopping, of course.  A necessary chore.   Then on to Home Depot for more lumber, stain, and miscellaneous painting implements.  By the time that was done, so were we.

• Began assessing what we would do on the back porch Sunday, and Lynn went in as he is still recovering from the back injections.  I have been amazed he has been able to do as much as he has.  He is no spring chicken (rooster) as he will be 74 this year, but hopefully the back injections will relieve some of the pain in his back.  So far so good, he has been able to do about 3 times more hours of work without hurting.  Before, after only an hour on his feet and his legs and back would hurt so bad he would have to stop, then it would take him a couple of days to recover.  Needless to say his life sucked, and he hated it.  Add to that, he needed to lose some weight.  Quite a bit of weight.  Which is very difficult when you can’t be the least bit active, and when moving around any, is a chore.

• It has been almost 2 weeks since the injections, and he has been losing weight easier and has more stamina.  He still has problems with getting winded and dealing with exhaustion.  Hopefully, that will subside as he continues to lose more weight.  We can only pray.

• While he recovered from the two trips to town, I proceeded to stain the 24 more 2×6’s.  They are ready to be put down.  I stopped for the night and decided to do some laundry, and get some needed house work done.  The plan is to wake early and get out and moving on the porch as it is predicted that we will be having some record breaking highs this week.

SUNDAY

• Up bright and early.  Had a little breakfast then began lugging all the tools, extension cords, compressor, gloves and anything else that we thought we would need, out to the porch.

• Lynn cut the pressure treated posts and we put down some concrete square bases for them to set on.  I want to say pavers, but that isn’t what they are.  I’ll include a picture next week.   We couldn’t put a footing in as the stump roots won’t let us.  Remember that monster stump, well we are building around it the same as they did 50-75 years ago when the original porch was built.  Wise people.

• I played the demo diva again and removed more of the old porch for about another 6 to 8 feet or so.  Attached the dryer vent which runs underneath the porch.  It has been a problem crawling under there and trying to put it back together when it comes apart.  It was constantly coming apart.  Put it together this time and used sheet metal screws to attach it so it won’t come apart.  Much easier to put together when you aren’t laying on your belly.

• We attached the remaining 11 foot  2×8 along the front.  I am starting to get excited with the progress.  What can I say, doesn’t take much to please this girl.  Just a little progress.

• Now, with all the demo, we can’t get to the back door, which means that I will need to go out later when it cools down a little and put more boards down.  At 1:30 the temperature was 96 outside so we broke for lunch and decided to stay inside for a bit.  Although we have been drinking lots of water, it is still too hot to try to work in that heat.  It will probably be about 6:00 or after, when we will go back out.  I am doing this on Word and will copy and paste to my blog later and add to it with further adventures of this weekend.

• Later, Lynn still hasn’t recovered well enough to go back out.  It just isn’t worth it to his health to try.  So, I had some cleanup, of the old porch tongue and groove boards that I ripped off earlier.  Needed to cleanup any debris, so if Lynn feels like mowing down our weeds in the back yard, he can.  Since I won’t be putting down anymore deck boards, we went and got a 4×8 sheet of ¾ “  plywood (out of our scrap pile) so we can access the back door.  That is a must for Kinzie, our beautiful collie building inspector.  She has been spending a lot of quality time with us in the house as it is just too hot for her outside.  She is getting a wee bit spoiled.

• We may be able to work on it on the 4^th as it is supposed to only get in the high 80’s.  So back to work tomorrow and squeeze 5 days work into 4 days.  Love holidays, and you really need them by the time they come around.

• Well that’s all for tonight folks.  I promise pics next weekend.

Anna, the hot novice carpenter 🙂