I Made a Gate!!

The weekend started out slow as I really didn’t want to work on the porch yesterday after grocery shopping and going to Home Depot for 2×4’s, and to two different pharmacies for pills for Lynn.  But I managed to move the big ladder and put up a post and one railing which actually took me all afternoon.  So I planned to get up early Sunday and try to make a gate, now that I knew the size of the opening.  I had Lynn give me detailed instructions last night on how to figure the angles.  He is still under the weather, but hopefully Wednesday he will be better.

Sunday – Today – I got up, ate a little breakfast, put on some warm clothes and ventured out to the porch.  I worked this all out in my head last night.  You know I don’t use skill saws and Lynn is not able to help, so I decided that I could use the chop saw to get what I needed done.  I’m not afraid of a chop saw or radial arm saw, just the skill saw.  Also, I will needed to use the band saw on some of the long angles.

First I laid out the rails and stiles to make a square, and I needed to check it for “square.”  Norm Abrams taught me that.  I watch the Yankee Workshop!!  So the first picture is of me making it square 🙂

Checking for Square. 59″ on each angle. Not too bad.

In doing this, Lynn wanted me to use some wood screws with the slotted heads.  That’s not what I wanted to use, but I deferred to his decision, at least for some of the project.  It took trying to drill pilot holes first and I tried 3 different sizes of bits before I found the right one.  I still don’t think I got it big enough because I had to really work the driver and put my weight behind it.  Hehe.

This is the thing, the chop saw was in the house that we are building and I had to make several (lots really) trips to get the boards the right size.  Measure once and cut a bazillion times.  It is about 200 ft.  so I got lots of exercise.

Drills and drills are not created equal.  I bought Lynn this 90 degree drill or Christmas one year and I love the way it feels in my hands as it “fits” my delicate palms.  But it is not a variable speed and does not like the bigger drill bits.  So I had to bring out the heavy duty variable speed drill/driver.  That baby worked, but it meant changing out the bits all the time from drill to driver.  Nothing is ever easy.  Ugh!

Drill not strong enough, have to get the heavy one with more torque, and variable speed. Ugh.

Still hating these heavy slotted wood screws, but making do for now.  But I will be changing to the deck screws which are easier to handle and I won’t need to drill a pilot whole.  More better 🙂

Now for the angles.  I picked out the pattern from some gates that Lynn made for the horse paddocks but I needed to adapt it for a porch gate.  Put the diamond pattern in next, and that is where the angles came in.  That is where the chop saw came in.  The angle that worked for me was 35 degrees.  Love the chop saw, but I need a new sharper blade, but that isn’t my job. At the moment anyway.  So here is the Skil chop saw, I think I bought that one Christmas, for Lynn, but can’t remember when.  I know he has another saw that is still in the box.  That man and his toys.

Chop saw.

Again I made a multitude of trips to the house to cut and re-cut the boards and get the angles just right.

Then, was the time to fill in the holes with yet another angled board, had to use a handy dandy little angle thingy to figure it out.  Forgot to take a picture of that.  By this time Lynn made it out to the back porch to see what was going on and lend some of his wisdom to the project and show me how to use that angle thingy.  Don’t ask me what angle, because I haven’t a clue, it just fits.  Now this is where the band saw came in.  I had never used a band saw before, but no time like the present to learn.  I just had to find the on and off switch and put the wood through really slowly as I am not real good at following a straight line.  But I did it.  Made 1 board to fit and then cut 3 more just like it.  I can rock that band saw!!

Sears Band Saw, Lynn bought in the 60’s. Still going strong.

Now for the reveal.  Of course, I couldn’t wait to hang it.  I really should have primed it and painted it first, but I have been wanting this done for 5 or 6 months.  I hated that big board up there keeping Kinzie from guarding her fiefdom.  Now she can see every cat that saunters by.

Gate from the inside

This is from the porch side.  This is the birds-eye-view Kinzie will be guarding.

Gate from the outside.

This is the one from the outside.  I know, I should have waited until after it was painted, but a little blue tape will mask it off and all is good.  How do you like the heavy hinges and latch?  I put those on too.  Now I just have to caulk all the mistakes and prime and paint it.  2 more side balustrades and that part of the porch is done.

Lynn will handle putting in the light by the door, the ceiling fan and the flood light for the driveway.  Just a couple of weekends more and I will be closing this project down for the year.  When I get some painting done, I will post the before and after pictures.

Thanks for following my blog.

Annie, master of the band saw 🙂

Working Our Way Up the Porch

The railings are starting to go up.  One at least.

Lynn went to Spokane this past week for his consultation on getting a pacemaker.  He is a candidate for the modified pacemaker, but to satisfy the insurance company they have to monitor him for the next 3 months and then get another heart echo, before he is eligible.  Irregardless of the fact, that they have been trying to control his arrhythmia with medications for the last 5 years.  The doctor also changed his heart medication and that has really caused him to be extremely tired and lethargic.  Hopefully, after the pacemaker is in, and functioning well, he can get off of some of the medications he is on.   He feels he is over-medicated, but which one do you get rid of?  Alright this is a blog about DIY Building projects, just thought I would let you know that my significant other has not been able to get into this project, too good.  I am amazed at what he can do, as he will be turning 74 in a couple months.

We didn’t get the scaffolding moved like we wanted this weekend, so I had to settle for working on the railing.  I really wanted to work on the porch by the stairs leading from the side yard, but we have some other things that need to be done first and that involves the scaffolding.  Next week we will tackle that.

Our do-it-yourself center that is closest to us, is Home Depot, so that is where we buy all our paint and most other building products.  I have found that their paint is good if you use a good foundation primer.  I prefer the Kilz Premium Primer as it works the best.  It is worth the extra money if you want the finish to match.  I had primed the balustrades and the 2×4’s before putting them up, then quickly put on 1 coat of the Behr Semi-Gloss White.  It will need one more coat.  Hopefully, I can paint the whole porch before bad weather sets in.

I guess I will be in the roofing business one for time before I hang up my hammer.  We have decided to put up asphalt shingles to match the rest of the house, if we can match the color.  If not, we will get as close as we can.  I would have like to put up metal roofing, but that should be done professionally, and that isn’t in the budget.

This particular blog will be short as I am pooped.  Gotta fix supper, do sock fairy duties, take a shower and get ready for another week at the salt-minds.

Take care,

Annie, the porch wizard.

Storm rolling in from the south on 9-5

First railing goes up

Kinzie the building inspector, fell asleep on the job.

A short Saturday post

Saturdays we don’t usually get very much accomplished on the porch.  But today I was pleasantly surprised as Lynn felt up to cutting a few boards.  I intended on getting some painting done, but decided to put on some of the joist hangers for the ceiling joists of the porch.  A little painting came later.

All the boards for the roof rafters and the spacers are cut and ready to be nailed up tomorrow.  While Lynn was doing that, I began to put the ceiling joists hangers on a 2×6, actually 2 2×6’s so far.  I knew I could do this with my handy dandy palm nailer, so that was my designated job.  With Lynn’s suggestion, it was a lot easier than how I was thinking of doing it.  That’s why I keep him around, for his wonderful, intelligent, winning disposition.  🙂  Well the first two for sure.

He said I should put the hangers on before we nailed the 2×6’s up on the wall.  Good idea, I can do that.  So I made sure I had the end hanger in the right place then centered the rest 16 inches apart.  Worked wonderfully.  Then we put up a chalk line and put up the first two board.  There is about 3 feet more to put up, but we have to do a little revising on that first.

After that, Lynn was done in, but I had a little more energy, so I decided to caulk some holes and put some primer on the eves and down one side to make ready for the two coats of green.  By that time, I was done for today.  Tomorrow the plan is to put up all the roof rafters and possibly some of the ceiling joist, plus put on the two coats of paint before I don’t have access to that area.  We would like to get up the sheeting on, but that is just too much to hope for.

So stay tuned for tomorrow’s update.

Annie, the happy weekend warrior.

Coming along. See all the roof rafters stacked on the deck? They will be on top tomorrow.

A little bright white primer on the corner, and it appears I will be painting some of the house this year. Ugh.

Porch Project Moving at a Snails Pace

Well, I have the next 7 days off and I’m hoping to get some progress on the porch.  Though the temperatures will be in the upper 90’s, it is at least a dry heat and we can somewhat work in the shade.  Went to Home Depot yesterday and picked up more lumber and paint, plus ordered the crown molding that goes on the fascia.

Today I was excited about cleaning the house exterior which will actually be covered up.  Then preparing the eaves by washing, scrapping and painting.  Didn’t get too far in it when I was moving the ladder with the hammer still on the top.  You guessed it!!  The klutz that I am, the hammer fell on my head.  Couldn’t believe I did that.  I said some pretty awful swear words and got a gash of about 1 inch with lots of blood.  Maybe the elderly shouldn’t be allowed to have sharp heavy implements.  Or should be monitored closely.  Remember a couple of weeks ago when Lynn accidentally hit  me in the head with the 4 foot pipe clamp?  Well, I had just gotten over that.  Now this.  Ugh, I think I will be getting a head ache from this one.  I’m just glad it was my little hammer verses Lynn’s framing hammer.

You know when you are working on a 100+ year old house, you are going to find some remuddling.  Well we didn’t escape that.  Where the fascia boards and crown molding will go, the carpentry was cobbled up.  it appears that maybe they couldn’t do it right from being on the roof so there is about a 2 inch difference in the opening from one end of the porch to the other.  It is something we will have to just do some adapting because to do it the way it should be done would require reworking the whole roof on the house.  That isn’t happening.  The part that will needs to be modified is not structural.  Somewhere along the line, someone put a pony wall in and laid the roof rafters on that which is well done.  It was cobbling the extension of about 6 inches to accommodate the crown molding that is  done incorrectly.  The underneath fascia is straight and level, so that will stay.  When you find something level on an old house you want to leave it alone.  So I did get more old rotten trim boards off and a couple more will be coming down.  So I washed then primed the fascia board with Kilz Premium Primer, (the best primer) and put one coat of paint which is a sage green/grey.  I Like earth tones.  I hope it will all come together in the end.

While I was doing the cleaning, scraping and painting on the eaves, Lynn was replacing the floor in our horse trailer.  That needs to be repaired before we go on our trip in August to pick-up on 4 month old colt.  We are naming him Cheyenne.  I will post a picture of him when he was just a few weeks old.  What a beauty he is.  It has sparked some new life in Lynn.  Something to look forward to.

Speaking of Lynn, we will be celebrating our 25th Anniversary on Tuesday.  With all our projects and working on building our dream home and all the other projects in between, I am surprised we haven’t throttled each other.  Those 25 years went really fast as I look back on it.  We lost both our mothers, survived a major flood in 1996, back surgery in 2004, heart surgery for a stint in 2008 and numerous other life events.  But the fact that it appears to have gone by quickly says that it was a happy 25 years.

More in a couple of days.

Annie, the klutzy carpenter.

1975 horse trailer

Lynn’s photo-op

Fascia problems

The other end of the fascia

Prep Work Behind the Scenes

This weekend saw a little progress.  You know unless I am seeing a lot of physical progress, I refer to it as “a little.”  Yesterday after grocery shopping and having lunch, I went outside and screwed down the remaining decking.  Of course it took a couple of hours.  Slow but sure.  As I get older, it takes longer to get things done.

Today, I painted the 7 posts that I have for the porch.  They are 4X6 posts that will be used for the upright posts and the headers that the ceiling joists will be sitting on.  I know, confusing right?  At least it is for me, so I have to think about it and roll it around in my mind.  I see it kinda like a puzzle and all the pieces have to be put together in the proper order and, you just can’t rush it.  I am learning patients, everyday.

On another front when I was cooling off after lunch, I was cruising the internet in search of fascia moldings.  We have to replace the 5 inch molding along the roof line.  It has held up for 100 years and is finally looking tattered and torn.  In other words awful really really awful!!  We need to replace about 60 to 70 feet of it.  Of course I am not finding the exact pattern.   I think we will probably have to substitute something similar.  We cannot afford to have someone duplicate it exactly.  Even the ones that they have in the DIY centers are expensive.  It’s on the weather side of the house, so I would rather have pvc or urethane as it would hold up in the weather.  On the weather sides, we have a hard time keeping paint on wood.  I am open to any suggestions or if you are aware of a company that is affordable, I am all ears.

I am attaching photos of which I am truly embarrassed to be showing, that we have let it get this bad.  But the inside of this home had been the focus, then the front porch, now the back porch.  In between times we are working on the dream house.  I hope I at least get most of those projects finished by the time I retire.  That gives me about 4 years.

Back to painting.  I began painting some of the slats that will be on the railings on the back porch.  I finished 27 of them.  As with all my painting now, I begin with Kilz Premium Primer.  It is the best I have ever used.  It is exceptional in adhering to the raw wood and makes a great foundation for paint.  It also has to wear off my hands.  I tried many primers over the years and finally saw this primer in Fine Home Building Magazine.  If you ever need really good information, that is the magazine to buy.  We have found lots of good information in there.

I follow the primer with Behr Paint Semi Gloss from Home Depot .  We have so much dust here that the Semi Gloss sheds the dust easiest.  It has shown to be a good paint and holds up well.  I don’t get the paint with the primer in it as that is unnecessary when using the Kilz Premium Primer.  We shop at Home Depot as it is the only DIY center close to us.

Next weekend begins my vacation.  I am going to take a week off to work on the porch and celebrate our 25^th Anniversary.  25 years of DIY, I am surprised we have made it this long, working together on these project we tend to have some short tempers.  My husband is dreading it, because he said I am trying to work him to death.  He dreads the weekends and says he feels guilty if he isn’t out there working alongside of me.  That bothers me because I don’t want him to feel that way.  I know that he does as much as he can, I just wish we could afford to pay someone to get this done, but until I win the lottery, I guess this is as good as it get.  I think you have to play the lottery to win, hmmm, I guess we won’t be winning the lottery any time soon.  Hopefully, we will include a few fun things, like going to breakfast at the Maple Counter and lunch or dinner at a good restaurant.  Can’t be all work and not play.

Well it is back to work tomorrow (the paying job) for another week, then some much needed vacation time.

Until next weekend, stay out of the heat, and I’ll see you later.

Annie, the happy porch lady 🙂

Final coats on the posts

Slats being primed

Posts are done

Slats are done

Sad looking trim

Missing trim

Above the porch.

And the Wall Comes Tumbling Down

A productive weekend.  Never as far as we envision, but I’m good with it.

Spent our Saturday going grocery shopping, then a second trip to town to our main hang-out, Home Depot.  Picked up some white paint and some beveled 2×2’s for the spindles on our porch railings and some 2×4 hangers for the posts and miscellaneous things for wiring and such.  What a project.

Sunday we began this morning with knocking down the remaining wall.  We had only left it up so Kinzie wouldn’t get out of the back yard.  Her wonderful domain, but we want to keep her safe and she is never allowed out of the yard unless we are with her.

I hated this wall, so I was thrilled when Lynn said it is coming down.  Yeah!!!  What can I do to help?  Well my job was to cart all the stuff out to the demo pile for disposal later.  I can do that.  Then we replaced the temporary front framed 2x6x12 that helps to give the deck a picture frame style.  I finished demolishing the old porch floor and further exposed the tree stump.  It appeared that not long after it was cut down the porch was built and the tree had some sprouts that made a mangled nest.  I took a picture of that too.

By this time Lynn was hot and exhausted, so we stopped and had lunch.  I think Lynn is done for the day, but I may go back out and start painting some of the spindles (trying to think of a better name because they aren’t really spindles).

Oh well, you know what I mean.  That is what I am going to focus on this week, and have them ready for next weekend.

So take care, and I’ll update you next weekend.

Annie, the happy novice carpenter.

And the East Wall comes down

See all the tool on the freezer?

Look at the size of the stump

More Stump

Growth from the stump, maybe 75 to 100 years ago

Looking west into the back yard

Looking East where the wall used to be.

Happy 4th of July – Progress on the Porch

Happy 4th of July America.  This holiday gives you pause to count your blessings that we live in a country where we have all the freedoms we enjoy.  If you work hard you can achieve your dreams.  You know we are not wealthy, but we have our health, a roof over our head, food in our belly, and the right to worship as we choose.

Building our dream home is one our dreams.  Granted it has taken a looooong, time but we have worked hard and have enjoyed the fruits of our labor.  With a few detours.  The present one being our back porch in the little house we live in.  So now that I have led into that, here is our progress for today:

A day off work at the office, but a day of work on the back porch.  I did take some pictures as I wanted to record this project and have a look at the before and after pictures.  Today Lynn put up another trim board and cut away some of the obstacles to it laying flat.  Then he cut the deck boards to size, about 10 of them, then went in to get out of the heat and recuperate.  That is when my job began.  I drilled pilot holes so I wouldn’t split any of the boards then screwed them down with 3″ deck screws.  Love to see progress and watching the porch be transformed from something that I was ashamed of to something that I am proud to show off.

My two week project has turned into March, April, May, June & July, maybe August project.  Not regretting doing it.  Just sometimes get impatient with myself that it takes me and Lynn so long to do any project.  We always envision the projects going much faster and smoother.  I guess it teaches us patience.  I should be about finished with learning patience, and I am ready to graduate.

Lynn managed to mow the weed infested back yard on Tuesday.  Looks so much better.  It is dried out weeds, but at least they are all the same height, so it doesn’t look so bad.  Looking at the back yard and front yard, just lets me know what other areas of this house have been neglected.  My wish is that someone stops me the next time I am in Home Depot and offers to do a yard makeover.  I want a rich luscious green lawn with underground sprinklers on a timer and well groomed flower beds with beautiful butterfly bushes and humming bird feeders.  Weeded and no fox-tails in the lawn as they burrow under Kinzie’s fur.   I absolutely hate fox-tails.

Nodded off for a minute in dreamland, but I’m now back awake.  Well maybe someday that wish will come true, but I don’t think it will happen this summer.  Ho hum.  I will just have to settle for a beautiful porch.

Our plan for this weekend is to finish up the deck of the porch and begin the railing.  Back to Home Depot to get the railing material and I will then get out my trusty paint brush and begin more painting.  Oh, I can’t wait.  But for tomorrow I am back to work at being a paralegal and loving that job too.

Take care and thanks for reading my little blog 🙂

Annie, the tired patriot porch builder

This is looking from the back kitchen door out toward the yard.

Doesn’t that look so much better?

Porch Deck about 3/4 done. Then the railing and roof.

Finally got the dryer vent put together and it will stay that way with little screws.

Next to the stump, not able to dig, so we improvised.

We get to remove the 4×8 sheet of plywood and get some more done.

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 🙂

Wahoo, Making some progress on the porch

I know in last week’s post I was Debbie Downer, but this weekend has been awesome.  The week overall was a disaster, but the weekend put me back in a good frame of mind.

We started the week with Lynn having gone to the emergency room a week ago Friday.  Then on Tuesday he had to get two injections in his lower spine area.  These injections had not worked before, but he was out of options.  Amazing, they worked pretty good, I just hope he didn’t overdo it this weekend.  When Papa is happy, everybody is happy.  When he isn’t, God help us.  Now he will get to rest a little while I go to work through the week.

The porch is coming along nicely, but the rest of the property has gone to the dogs.  We have weed 3 feet high weeds and everything is dying from lack of care.  My flower beds are filled with debris and need watering, but the porch comes first.  Then some cleanup and it will be time for winter.  Ugh!!  Not going there, back to the porch.

Today we laid our first decking boards.  Then we picked up momentum and about a third of the deck is down.  Lynn had a goal of getting enough boards down to be able to move the freezer over.  Yes we have a freezer on our back porch!  I know the “hillbilly” has to come through sometime.  The freezer is a chest type and it is almost 25 years old and still runs good.  Lynn bought it just before we got married in July, 25 years ago.  I really did not want to have it on my NEW back porch, but, alas, that is where we would have to put the new one until be get the dream home built.  So it really doesn’t make sense at this time.  May go with an upright when the time comes.

Back to goals.  I like it when Lynn has a goal, because things get done.  We finished at about 3:30 just as it started to rain.  What timing.  Maybe next week we will be another 1/3 of the way.  We have to work around that monster stump.  Lynn measured the diameter and it was about 36-42″ across.  It’s not moving, so we are going to do what the pioneers before us did, build around it.  I think that stump is what actually determined what the depth of the porch was going to be.  It’s dimensions of the porch will be 8 foot by 19 foot.  A fair sized porch.  Remember when the deck is done, then comes the roof and railings, so there is still a ways to go.

To take you through what was done today.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, the floor I wanted to be in a picture frame style.  With the outside edge done with mitered corners, and then the boards laid perpendicular to the house.  Since we are constructing around that darn freezer we were not able to just tear the whole porch off, which would have been much simpler.  So we had to put temporary boards along the front until we are able to get the other 2×8 put along in front of the stump.  We will be using  pressure treated posts but will not be able to dig down to put in the concrete footing like we did before.  So that will be a challenge.  But Lynn is up to it. 🙂

Then I drilled pilot holes and drove in 3″ deck screws.  There is no bounce!!!  Each board was cut and fitted, and it looks awesome.  We used pipe clamps and an 8″ C-clamp to pull and push each board to its correct position.  Speaking of pipe clamps, watch out for the wild Scotsman wielding the pipe as it made contact with my head.  Made me see stars for a few minutes.  Guess it’s okay, no goose egg yet.  Usually, I don’t need help getting hurt, I have two left feet and am not the most graceful 62 year old.  But that is why I have a guardian angel by my side.

Porch look darn near perfect.  Right, I know it had no where to go but up.  The toughest thing to do was to move the freezer.  We put two 1 1/4″ pipes under it and rolled it over onto the finished side.  That cleared the way for “full-speed-ahead.”

As for the rest of today, I have to finish laundry.  Make dinner which will be sausage and eggs.  Make a taco salad for a work pot-luck tomorrow.  Plus 2 key lime pies for dessert.  Take a shower and work on my quilt.  See you next week.

Now for the photos.

Annie, the novice porch builder

The Treasures you Find when Demolishing an Old Porch

Well the demo continues.  Working on the floor of the porch has been interesting to say the least.  While tearing up the floor we are trying to preserve some of the joists underneath as some of that wood is stronger and bigger than you can buy today.  Pulling up flooring of tongue and groove, rotting floorboards.  Cleaning up as we go along and putting all the old pieces of wood in the burn pile.  Boy are we going to have a bonfire when we are done.  We have to have everything burned before July 1st when the burn ban goes into effect through Labor Day.

This has been an adventure, I would rather have skipped.  Though looking ahead to the awesome porch I envision will be the payoff.  Assuming it turns out as nice as the picture in my head.

Now you are not going to believe what we found underneath those rotting board.  A tree stump, that they just built the porch around.  I am talking about a really really big tree stump!!  I believe it must have been cut down 90 to 100 years ago.

We have not uncovered the whole stump, but it looks to be about 3 feet in diameter.  I took a picture, but not sure how good it will show the enormity of it.   This house was built in 1898, but not sure when the porch was built.  Probably sometime in the 20’s or 30’s maybe.  The man that lived in this house before we purchased it had live her for almost 50 years and raised a family here.  I believe the porch must have been put on before he moved in.

This porch will be the last major repair/replacement we will have to make in this house.  All of the rest of the house has been renovated inside and the front porch was done about 5 years ago.  The only other thing I would like to change is the aluminum siding.  I really don’t like aluminum siding.  Oh, and maybe the windows.  They don’t leak but they have wavy glass in them, and though it is vintage, I don’t like to look through it.  I don’t want my vision though the window to be distorted, my eyes themselves will do that on their own.  Need to quit thinking about what I would still like to do to this house as I hope to get on with the Dream House we are building next door.  Remember that project?

I took some pictures of the back porch demo, I hope you can see some promise in them.  It really has nowhere to go but up, right?

Stay tuned for next weekend.

Annie, the novice porch planner.

what a dirty mess.

wow, what a stump

A tree stump

Standing back for a clearer view of the mess.

Lynn with the saws-all