The Porch

On Saturday, Norm's brother Mike and nephew David came over and the guys worked for seven hours on the front porch. How I wish I had my camera working! :-( I had actually asked to borrow my sister's and then she and I both forgot about it...anyway, the guys tore off all three layers of the old porch flooring and frame, 80+ years' worth. The house was build 1907/8 and the porch was not original to the house; it appeared sometime before 1920. Every time the porch flooring rotted during the last century, the current owner would throw another layer of good wood on top of it! We had three layers of rotten wood flooring, and the pillars holding up the porch roof were rotting, too (Norm had replaced two of the worst pillars over a year ago)!

Besides tearing out the old porch flooring and joists, the guys replaced the third pillar, and added more cinder blocks to the crawl space beneath the porch in order to support the new joints, which they nailed in place. The joists are made out of treated wood, so no worries about rotting wood anytime soon! They also cut out some of the plywood that will be used for the new floor, although it needs to be primed and sealed with Kilz before being bolted into place. It's hard to believe all this took seven hours, but there really was a lot of hard hot work to do! We are so grateful for Mike and David's help!

Sunday, Norm and I spent several hours cleaning up the mess. All the old porch wood was piled up on a tarp in the middle of our lawn. He sawed up all the old wood into approximately 3-foot lengths and I hauled them over and filled up the crawl space under the porch with them. That way, we don't have to slowly fill our garbage can or rent a dumpster to get rid of the debris. It'll slowly finish rotting into the soil until the next century. Norm's going to seal off the entire crawl space so we don't get any cats or skunks under there like we have occasionally had in the past.

So there's plenty more work to do, and right now the front door's not usable as an entrance or exit; but I am dreaming of the day when I can sit on my front porch in a comfortable Adirondack chair, looking at my new beds of flowers and enjoying listening to the wind chimes while I read a good book!