Front porch

After many months of leaky gutters dripping water on it, part of the porch was in rough shape.

The floor boards were soggy and rotting, so we decided to replace them.

I'm smiling in the picture because we really hadn't started removing anything yet, so I didn't know that the supporting beam underneath would be rotten too. As usual, we were opening up a can of worms -- the support beam runs over the gas line which enters the house under the porch -- YAY! So, we had no choice but to fix this.


Of course, the support beam was original to the house, and had dimensions that were simply not available from the modern-day hardware store. We had a couple of choices for its replacement: either go to a lumber yard and get a custom-cut beam, or try to salvage what was there and reinforce it with new lumber. We chose the latter approach because the former would have required us to jack up the porch temporarily so we could tear out the old beam, but we really didn't want to do this because of the gas line and our relative inexperience with things that can explode.

When we removed the rotten floor boards, we discovered that animals were using the porch to store peanuts! I guess the wood was so soft that it was easy to dig into and create a cavern for hiding goodies in.

It took many measurements, lots of planning, quite a few trips to the hardware store to buy supplies, careful cutting, some creativity and a bit of luck to get things to fit right, but I think the end result was pretty good!

I think this project spanned most of the summer, from the end of June until some time in September, but it's not completely finished yet. Next summer, we get to paint it! :)