Lattice trim up and painted.

This morning Kathleen and I were able to get the trim up and prime it. I also got the stairs on. It's looking very nice, we are very happy with how much we were able to get done thismorning because it's supposed to rain again tomorrow. All that's left is lattice under the stairs and a lot of painting. The trim still needs two coats of paint and the rest needs one more coat.















Here is a picture from the front (obviously).

Walkway busted up!

I also rented a 65lb. jackhammer to bust up the old walkway. There was about 1.5 inches of blacktop on top of a very nice cement walkway... too bad we have to break it up - the stairs have moved to the right so the whole walkway has to shift over too. The jackhammer was pretty wild, I was able to rent it from Home Depot for 4 hours for about $50. I broke up the walkway and a couple areas around the old porch that had some more cement. Now we are trying to figure out what to do with this big pile of cement and tar. TBD... 

Lattice is up.

As you can see we got the lattice up. I think this migh also be the first picture of the finished moulding around all the doors. You can also see that the steps are allmost finished, but I still have to attach them to the house. 

Early October Porch Update

Well, I don't have any pictures today (and that's what's been preventing me from posting) but it's been so long I had better update this thing or else I'll never do it. So what has happened since the last post? Well, we finished painting all the doors and installed them. Then I installed trim around each door to give it a little style. I also installed the soffit and crown molding for the soffit and around the roofline. We have primed everything above floor level and given at least one coat of paint to almost everything. I was in the middle of chalking and painting when it started raining last week and it hasn't stopped yet so all that is on hold. Kathleen has been busy painting all the doors and windows and it's been my job to scrape the windows (I think next time we are going with a single pane - just kidding, the panes fit the house very well).

What's next, well I bought the lumber and lattice to build the stairs and to frame and install the lattice under the porch. We went with the vinyl lattice and we will see how it looks. We want it to look very nice when it's done so that may need to change if it looks cheap. I think the reason we went with it is because we didn't want to paint anymore.

There will be four stairs up to the porch and we are going to try to get away with no railings. We'll see what happens. I don't see a reason to get a final inspection so when it's done I'm not going to say anything. We have a lot of work to do inside anyway. The stairs are going to be about 5 ft wide and I'm not sure if they will be painted or not - we are still trying to figure out the treads. I bought pre made stringers because it's such a pain to make them and I've done it before so I don't feel the need to prove anything.

Kathleen had a great idea for a place to put all the window inserts that aren't being used (since at any time we have ten inserts that aren't being used). I am going to build a shelf under the porch to slide them onto. The only problem will be - how do we get to the shelf? I still haven't figured that part out.

I've also just ordered vinyl siding from Home depot to patch up all the little places that need some help. I hope the color matches - I'm not that great with color (in fact I am color blind) so I hope it's close enough. I ordered a box so that should be enough to do one entire side of our house! Ok, not quite but close.

Pianting.....

Ok, so now we have started painting. We are going to paint each door before we put them up so they are sealed and I have to start prepairing the framing to be painted and getting some of the finish work done... I put up some of the soffit yesturday and here is a picture with all the doors up but not painted...



















Here is another picture fo the inside of the porch with my wife as she paints one of the doors.



















And one last picture of my younger son climbing the ladder - because I thought it was cute - he got up there all by himself - I was just spotting.

I finally finished trimming all the doors.

So now all the "doors" are up except for the real door that you will use for entry to the porch. Now we have to paint all the doors - Yuck! It may be a while until I have any new news on this one. We have to paint all 10 doors, 10 screens, and 10 windows! My wife has been doing all the painting so far and they look great but man is it going to take a while. I also still have to figure out what type of molding to put up around each door.

The Mini

While I was out taking pictures of the porch I took a picture of my Mini since some of my friends and family haven't seen it yet. So there it is.... it's Soooooo fun and I've been getting 30 MPG!

First of the doors are up.

Last night I put up two doors to see how they would look. I have to say that they look very nice indeed. All I had to do was put some 1x2 stripping on the inside of the frame and screw the doors onto that. I had to trim the tops of these two doors. The front doors I will need to trim the sides as weel because of a small design flaw. I made the porch too narrow for the doors, but I will only need to trim about .25" off of each door.

We also desided that we would use moudling around each door once they are in. It's going to look so nice - I hope.

The roof is Done!

On Saturday I started shingling. Actually I had to do a bunch of things before I started. First I had to put a drip edge on all three sides of the porch, then I put up the Fascia. To do the fascia I needed to cut every roof rafter again to make sure they were all even. I had marked them earlier so it didn't take too long but I had to unscrew some of the plywood to get my saw in there.

So once that was done I screwed down the plywood again and then pounded a ton of nails into the plywood. Then came the ice and water shield (which I don't think I really need but why not). I ended up covering about 80% of the roof with the amount that I had bought. That stuff is nasty!

Then I finally was able to start shingling. I am using architectural shingles (I think that's what they call them). Actually we got them when the roofers reroofed our main roof - we asked for enough extra to finish the porch later. I started shingling away and it started to look pretty good.

I was able to get the front roof completed by the end of the day. I made a trip to Home Depot for some ridge shingles because you can't make them out of the normal shingles if you are using architectural shingles.

On Sunday I thought I was going to take a break but my wife informed me that I was going to finish the job. So I started on the side roofs and then onto the ridge. I was finished by noon! Yippe I have finished the darn roof! I'll have a picture soon.

Here is the latest picture. Sorry I didn't get any pictures of the roof before I slapped up the plywood, but I was excited to see what it looked like. I took two weeks off in the beginning of July - One was at home so I got some stuff on the porch done, but the other week was spent in Maine so I didn't even think about the porch.

Let's see, what happened first. Ah, yes, My friend, Jamie, came over to help me with the beam that sits on top of the wall on the front. It actually turned out to be very easy. I slapped two 2x10 together with 1/2" plywood spacers sandwiched in between to make it the same thickness as the wall. Then we slapped up some boards on each end.

That's where the fun ended. Getting the roof rafters cut correctly was a pain in the ass. I have a book that I used to try to calculate the correct slope and all that, but after doing the calculation about 3 times, with each time getting something that didn't look right, we finally ended up eye-balling it! My neighbor came over and kept telling me to just put the board up there and eyeball it and mark where you think you should cut.... well Steve we finally came around and that ended up being the best approach.

One crappy thing about my design was the hip roof, even after you figure out what your common rafter should be, then you have to figure out what the ridge rafter will be. But since I decided to scrap the calculation and just eyeball that too, it came out almost perfect the first time. Unfortunately the first time we hammered up the ridge rafters (which are the first thing that secures the wall so that the top of it can't move back and forth) we had the wall off square by about 1 inch. But it was the end of the day so we didn't see it. The next morning I went downstairs and looked out and couldn't believe that I could see that it was totally wrong. So all week, whenever I looked out the front windows I got a bad feeling in my stomach. I wasn't sure how to fix it.

When I finally got up there the next weekend I took the ridge rafters down and squared up the wall and screwed in a support (seen in the picture on the front). Then I put the ridge rafters up again... this time we had a square wall. I then finished up all the other rafters ( the ones that go from the ridge rafter out - I can't remember what they are called). Then I got up there and put up the plywood as fast as I could so the rain would stop making puddles on the deck.

Tomorrow I plan on cutting the ends off each roof rafter to make the Facia straight, cut the roof plywood edges straight, and start shingling. I'll have to go buy some crown molding because I want the roofline to look nice.

Wall Framing and Subfloor

Now we're talking! Today I was able to frame the walls and get the flooring in. The walls are alternating 4x4 and 2x4. When I am done there will be three pairs of doors in the front and one pair of doors on each side. The 4x4 provide the extra spacing to make the pairs look right. They are also the load carriers for the roof.

The next step will be to build another beam for the roof and get it on top of the wall... I will need help for that to pick it up. I've asked my friend to come over tomorrow and help me start the roof! Yeeha.

Floor Joists

So next I just finished the floor joists.... well, enough to take a picture of them. Every joist in this picture has two joist hangers, and each joist hanger has four small nails and two huge nails. That's a lot of nailing and as of this picture I have not finished nailing them all in, but it started to look cool so I took a picture.

I also added some more hardware to the tops of the posts (between the post and beam) to secure the beam to the posts.

The Ledger, Posts, and Beam

I forgot to mention that I put the ledger on the house while I was digging holes for the footings. Having the ledger on the house gave me a reference point to measure from to know exactly where the center of the posts would be. It also gave me a reference point for how high to make the posts. The ledger was simply two PT 2x8 attached to the house using 5" lag bolts with washers. I made sure that the lag bolts where placed so that they either hit the sill of the house or the studs of the wall.

The way that I did my posts was to simply cut them too long and then secure them to the footings using anchors. Then I got out my water level (because I'm low tech still) and marked a mark on each of the post that was 11.5 inch. below the top of the ledger. This is the top of the posts since I want the top of my 2x12 beam to be level with the top of the ledger. This part took some time to mark and get it right - I think I checked about 5 times before I cut the posts with my circular saw.

Then I constructed my 3 wide 2x12 beam by simply slapping two 2x12s together and screwing them together and then adding a third and screwing that together. I put screws every 16 inches in each piece of wood. I did this in place (sitting right on top of the posts) because I did not have anyone to help me pick it up when I was done. I remembered to make the outside 2x12 1.5 inches longer than the rest so that the end joists would fit nicely...

Here is a picture of the ledger, posts and beam finished - now we get to start to see how big this sucker will be...



















Here is a close up of the outside joists and the connection to the beam.



















And here is the joint in the middle on the beam - yes the offsets where planned that way.

New Design approved and posts are in.

I went to the building department to have my drawing approved and they were fine with the new design. So I went to work finishing up the three holes. All I used to dig the holes was a shovel and post hole digger. I had done this once before at another house and ended up renting an auger, but with only three holes to dig I figured I could skip it. The dirt also ended up being very easy to dig so I was very pleased with how the digging went.

Once the holes where dug I called the town to come and "inspect" the holes. This is to make sure you don't skimp on the depth of the hole. They came by the next day (during the week) and looked at them for about 15 seconds. Approved!

I then had to get cement - I decided, on my way home from work to get some of the cement in my Mini. Well, it turns out that my Mini doesn't hold much more than 800 lbs so I couldn't get much cement. I needed 5 80lbs bags per hole so that was 1200 lbs of cement to get. I'll make a long story short and say that next time I'll bring the Jeep and I'll get more than I think I need (it's always easier to return a bag then to run out in the middle of pouring cement to get one more bag).

So then all I had to do is rent a cement mixer and start mixing cement. I actually think this is fun so I had a blast doing this part. You have to mix water into it until it sticks together and the rocks in it shouldn't roll anymore. I also ignore the sign on the cement mixer that says not to stick the shovel in while it's going - that's the best part!

Once I had each post poured I lined up my strings again to find where the post's center would be and stuck the "J" bolt down into the post leaving about 1 in. above the top of the post to connect the post anchor to later. When all was said and done (and it had cured overnight) I took a picture to show my work. You can see all three posts in this picture and the "J" bolts sticking up on each one.

Small issue with digging the footings

I called Digsafe earier in the week and they told me that they only mark cable, electric, and gas lines. Since I have a water line and sewer line I needed to call my town office to fine out how to have these pipes marked - I wanted to stay away from the sewer and water lines because they are, no doubt the oldest pipes coming into my house. It only took them a couple days to come by and mark all the stuff that had to be marked (it turned out that I only have one water/sewer trench and one gas line coming into my house).

Well, I went to dig four holes (each one needs to be 48 inches deep and 12 inches in diameter) for the four footings that I had originaly designed the porch to have but realized that I would be very close to the yellow flags for the gass line that the dig safe guy had put on the front lawn. I decided to dig anyway, but to take it easy once I got to the level I thought the gas pipe would be ( I judged this by looking where it came into the basement)....

Well, it seems that the marker was a bit off and it turns out that the gas pipe goes directly through the whole I need to did for one of the footings.

Soooooo, I will need to change the design to have only three footings I guess. I am bringing the following design in to the building department for them to ok to change, we'll see what they say.

Demolition Done!

Well, It's gone! I was very happy to finish this part in just one day. Thanks to Tod for all the help. But as one passer-by said, "That was the easy part."

Finishing up the Demolition

So then we went to work on the decking - this should not take long.

Here Is a close-up of the carpenter ant damage that I found when I went to hit the end of the porch with a sledge hammer and it went right through!
Carpenter Ant Damage

Roof Down

So far so good. We were able to finish the roof off right after lunch. Tod (right) and I (left) possed for a picture before starting on the deck.

No more roof.

Ceiling is down.

The ceiliing is down. Now to see what we can do about the shingles.

Ceiling opened up.

Demolition day!

I got a friend to help me start tearing down the old porch today. I was so excited to start that I forgot to take a picture before we started. I'm glad I remembered before going too far. Tod is working on the shingles while I tear down the ceiling.

Demolition underway