Well folks, it’s official — it’s fall! Except in the sense that it’s not technically fall yet. But you know what I mean. It’s back to school time. Classes start at Hubby’s school tomorrow, so we’re getting back in the swing of things around here. I’ve had fall organization fever, and I have loads of projects to share with you if I can get my blogging act together.
But today–in the spirit of “how I spent my summer vacation”–let’s rewind to this (fictionalized) conversation with my dad back in May…
Me: “We’re gonna do it–we’re getting the house painted!”
Dad: “Great!…You know, if you paint the house, you’re going to have to do something about that porch.”
He was right (and more supportive than this snippet may suggest). Ugh, that porch. THAT PORCH!
It’s always been a problem area. It had green outdoor carpeting when we bought it. We basically had an astroturf porch, people. (No, that’s not a trend you missed.) This picture is far too kind to the carpet.
We ripped it off almost immediately. Then we basically just slapped a couple coats of paint on the floor and railings and declared the porch good enough. We always figured it would be a project for the next owners since we had such extensive renovations to tackle inside.
Then porch leprosy set in.
Exhibit A: Paint chips falling all over the place.
Exhibit B: Boards rotting through.
And some preexisting conditions had grown more and more irksome. Like the oh so subtle floor patch, seen here under my mom while she does battle with the aforementioned astroturf.
And the steps are…not great.
Dad was right, if we were going to invest in the exterior of our home, it only made sense to take care of the porch, too. It had become unusable and borderline hazardous (since paint chips are generally frowned upon in toddler play zones and non-rotting floors are recommended — you heard it here).
So we hemmed and hawed and brainstormed and researched and eventually got this:
That’s my rendering of our porch-to-be with the sixty five stamps that are apparently required on even the smallest reno plans in our city. Seriously, that packet of papers was clipped and stapled then unclipped and unstapled and photocopied and stamped and rearranged then re-stapled and re-clipped so many times in my two hours at the permit office that I felt like I was playing one of those carnival games where the guy moves around the three coconut shells until you can’t tell which one is hiding the prize. But in the end, we got our prize:
Permit! We hung it eight weeks ago, full of pride and optimism. You’ll be shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that this project is taking us longer than expected. (Pretend you’re shocked.) We have some major work done, but we have a ways to go. This is what it looks like today.
And here’s a quick breakdown of where we stand on the five big parts of this project.
(1) Ceiling
Once the house was painted, the brown porch ceiling suddenly looked dark. Too dark. And out of place.
So we decided to lighten it up with white beadboard. We’ve made progress–beadboard is up–but it’s not ready for a close up. The seams between pieces are, um, prominent. Hubby assures me this is nothing that caulk and paint can’t mask. I’m keeping my unoptimistic thoughts to myself on that one, so let’s just move on, shall we?
(2) Floor
This part of the project is actually done. All done! And it’s the biggie–in terms of time, money, and complexity–so it probably deserves a separate post. Maybe. For now I’ll tell you that we went with Southern Pine tongue and groove porch flooring, which appears to be what the existing floor was made of. Both layers.
Yes, during demo we discovered that somewhere along the way, someone installed a new porch floor right on top of the original one.
Nice.
(3) Columns
We initially planned to leave the existing 4×4″ columns in place but cover them with PVC column wraps (like this) to enclose the chipping paint and give the columns more visual heft. We’ll still get the visual heft, but our column wraps will go around brand new 4x4s. We had to make that call upon discovering that the old ones were resting on top of rotted wood. One of them wasn’t even nailed in place.
Switching out the 4x4s was pretty easy, or so I hear from Hubby and Dad. It just required renting a lolly column, which is a really big jack for just this purpose.
We already have the column wraps on hand, so that’s our next step. Then it’s on to…
(4) Railings
We’ve made decisions about the new railings, but haven’t made any tangible progress. As you saw above, the porch is currently without railings. I’m loving the clean look, but it’s a code violation. Darn. Good thing we’re going with the least visually obtrusive option we can manage: horizontal cable railings.
Something like this: (photo by LockDry from here)
Let me tell you, I am jazzed about this. Super excited. Really really psyched. We’re going to DIY it. I’ll be sure to give you all the juicy details when we get around to this.
We’ll use galvanized pipe for the handrails and vertical supports (from floor to handrail). One is required on the front of the porch and one on the side. We’re planning to paint the pipe, probably white. But I worry that the handrail and vertical support will stand out like a big T on the front of the house.
See? We considered painting the pipe a low-luster silver to coordinate with the steel cables and to disappear more in front of the gray house. But we scrapped that, thinking silver would look all oddball and out of place. And it could make the pipe look more like, you know, pipe. I don’t want the whole thing to read too industrial. (“Hey, this here is pipe. Did you notice? Because it is definitely pipe. Industrial pipe!”)
So I’m thinking this might be a better T alternative.
Better? I’m not sure. Feel free to weigh in.
(5) Miscellaneous finishing
I’m cheating and lumping all the little stuff that I prefer not to think about into one category. The front steps will be patched and painted. (Floor color? House color? To be decided.) We’ll also need to address the textured mess of a fascia board (which runs between the roof and the top of the posts).
I don’t think we can get away with calling that painted over chippyness shabby chic. Something must be done.
And various little bits need to be trimmed out and finished. The new floor is lower than the old one (on account of being only one layer), so we have some painting to do.
Thrilling stuff. Not really. But I’d like to stave off the very real possibility that we ignore these details until we prepare to sell this house someday and an ulcer inducing tornado of fix-the-little-bits fury blows through here.
But we can’t ignore the railings for long because the city will be looking to do an inspection and close out our permit. So I guess the race is on with our permit expiration date….Um, hmm, excuse me while I go look up our permit expiration date…
So, how did you spend your summer vacation?
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Linking up with House of Hepworths, At the Picket Fence, and Too much Time On My Hands.