Pre-Weekend Baseline

I have a list of a trillion things going on in my mind for this weekend. It's the last week of classes for school, so of course I have to meet up with my groups on Saturday & Sunday. And I told one of the girls from church that I'd help her sew her dress on Saturday afternoon (but she hasn't called to confirm, so that's a little shaky) But I still want to do some work on the house, so here's the current status, and we can review at the end of the weekend to see how far I got...

Baluster Cutting - 6 of 50 complete

Porch Beam Paint Scraping - 2.5 of 4 complete

Shingle Making - 2 bundles cut to width (I have no idea how many I need, but all the corners need to be trimmed)

Grass Patch Growth - 5 out of 7-14 days


I have a serious problem, because obviously, it's too much to complete in one weekend! It's like when you go to a buffet and you load your plate up with food, only to realize half way through eating that your eyes are bigger than your stomach... I'm that way with house projects. And I always have to have more than one thing going on at a time. I think it drives Jim nuts...

So the other thing I'm looking at is porch flooring. I like the "idea" of real wood floors on the porch, but since this is highly susceptable to rot (as evidenced by the 2 layers of rotted floors there now), I'm highly considering using an Azek cellular pvc deck board from Vintage Woodworks. They have a 3 1/2 inch version that I think would look right. It just seems like putting together a tongue & groove floor would be asking for rot.

Here's what my Porch Design book says:
"...a very traditional wood floor can be made of 1 by 4 lumber. Many "old-timers" feel this lumber should not be "flooring" (with tongue & groove or shiplapped edges), as this will tend to trap moisture."

And I always do like to follow the advice of "old-timers"......

I got their color sample kit. Here they are with my paint chips on the current porch floor:


The one on the bottom is the one I'm leaning towards. It's called "Clay". While it's difficult to see in the photo, it sort of has a greenish cast to it, and matches the paint tones quite well.

So, here we go - update to follow!