Dueling Ladders

I finished the 1/2 posts this weekend Here's a view post painting on Saturday:



As I was finishing these up, Jim went to Homer to pick up some hardi-plank/board-fake-wood stuff to cover the crappy porch soffits (no way we were going to strip thick paint while looking up - imagine neck aches, paint chips in the eyes, and no way to leverage the scraper...) Anyway, he comes back with the materials... and a new ladder! He was so excited about his new ladder, I had to capture it on camera. Warning, though - this is rated PG-13 for some gratuitous use of mild profanity... sorry Mom.



Just to put my reply in context, we've been using a little 6-foot wooden step ladder, left in the garage by the previous owner, for the past 4 1/2 years. Jim likes to say that it wobbles, but I contend that has more to do with the uneven ground than the actual ladder. Besides, if you follow ladder guidelines and don't step on the top two steps, it's all good.



So anyway, Jim used the new ladder to put up the cover-up soffits



And I used the old ladder to paint.



Luckily, both ladders do their job!

Then today we put the remaining railing and balusters up. It was not without problems. But I won't point them out, because we don't think anyone will actually notice them. Here's the pictures





A couple of side notes:
-The roofers are scheduled to start sometime this week.
-We turned on the pellet stove for the first time this season.

Back to Work

After a couple of weekends of not doing much for house renovations, this weekend we were back to the grindstone.

Most of Saturday I spent finishing the painting on the handrails & subrails - a deceptively time-consuming activity. I decided to paint them the dark green, so it took 3 coats.

Meanwhile, Jim did some electrical adjustments. The light we chose from Rejuvenation came in, so he put that up.



We also decided to put up 3 recessed lights



This really brightened the porch up - as you can see from this picture taken at dusk...



...which is particularly nice because for some reason, there is no street light that shines on our section of the street. And while this neighborhood is much safer than others I've lived in, it's still nice to be able to see what's happening when it's dark out.

Jim also moved the electrical box, which has been so beautifully displayed at the front door entrance (who chose that location????)


and moved it to a more inconspicuous location at the back of the porch - here is the hole that he drilled for the wires:



Much better location. Jim says it's for my Christmas lights and stuff. Which actually means that it's for my power tools and some family in the future's Christmas lights.

Then Sunday, we finally pulled back out THE BALULSTERS!!! We worked on two sections. I'll just go straight to the pictures, because that's all anyone wants to see!








The last two sections need parts of the 1/2 posts finished (they're in progress...) before they can be put up.

I can't believe how long it's taking to do this porch project. Last year it felt like we got soooo much more done. But it was all just straight clapboard stripping and painting. So much more detail on these, I guess.

I can't believe it, but we're already planning our "end of exterior renovation season" soup party...

Mocking up the Handrails

Most of Saturday was spent sanding and painting the beam. I'm not sure it looks like we did a lot, but it sure seemed to take a while.



We still need to fake some relief on the dark green brackets at the top of the posts, like I did on the bay window, but the paint needs to dry a little more before I do that...

There was some big community event geared at kids that took place on the common on Saturday. When these type of things happen, because we are right in downtown, our street becomes a parking lot, and we have a lot of extra traffic passing by. We had a lot of people saying they liked the color scheme (now that it looks like a color scheme and not just a pink house). Jim and I joked that we'll be starting a trend... only everyone else will have their houses done before we can even finish our porch...

Speaking of finishing,

I had visions of going all agro-renovator and getting the handrails put up this weekend too. THAT didn't quite happen, but we did get some parts cut out for two of the sections.

Here's Jim checking out how the subrail works. It took a couple tries to get a tight fit with the subrail between the posts. Not having any carpentry training, we kind of learn as we go - I'm sure there's plenty of tricks of the trade that we don't know...



And then I HAD to pull out the camera to take a shot of a baluster in place:



one day all 50+ of those things are going to see the light of day... one day... hopefully soon.

Then my little side project - the house number! I've been scouring the internet trying to find a cool house number to go on the porch. One fitting of the new improvements. I found a few sites that made cool metal ones in almost any font you can imagine. Those numbers were around 80 bucks. While maybe not a ton of money, I wasn't sure I wanted to spend that much for something that may or may not match the gold paint, and with some roof repairs/replacement pending (more on that another day), I didn't really want to spend the extra dollars anyway. So last night a lightbulb went off, and I decided to make one with the scroll saw and paint it with the same gold paint.

Here it is:


I do have to admit that the number broke in two at that thin spot on top. We had to glue it back together. Maybe it won't last through a New England winter - we'll find out - but, hey, the cost was essentially free, and that can't be beat.

Hard as Wood

Aside from the little front door glass mishap, I've been making some pretty good progress on the porch. Jim is off on his Speed Week adventure, so I've been on my own.

Last night I worked on the porch posts. If you recall, they had some pretty nasty rot on the bottom. I chopped off the bottom 1 1/2 inches to reveal, for the most part, fairly good wood. Here's the chopped off bits:



Niiiiiice. The sawing process was a bit of a fiasco, if you can imagine me trying to maneuver 93.5" 6x6 beams around in my basement by myself. (the basement, by the way, is more of what I'd call a "cellar" and is obstructed by chimneys, structural posts, and pipes and overcrowded with woodworking equipment and clothes washer spare parts) The first post I cut was not such a good job, but as with most things in this renovation project, the more I did it, the better I got at it.

Then today, I went at them with the Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer, or CPES from the Rot Doctor. This stuff is supposed to "restore strength to rotten wood while helping to resist further rot in the remaining good wood"

I've brushed that epoxy mix on...



And now I wait 1 - 3 days until I apply the epoxy filler, which I probably won't get to until Sunday.

I've also been working on the balusters. I had started out priming some with aerosol cans of primer. That didn't go very far - I think I got 18 done with 4 cans. So when I went to Homer to get more, I decided to just buy a paint sprayer. Nothing too fancy, but with the amount of woodwork that needs to be done on this porch, it will easily pay for itself versus the ridiculous amount of aerosol cans I'd need at $5 each. And I can use it for priming AND top coats.

While my set up wasn't the best, once I got used to it, the sprayer worked pretty well. And I finished priming all the remaining balusters in good time:





And, lastly (though I actually did this first), I trimmed up the deck boards. They're not trimmed to their final length, but I wanted to be able get on and off the porch without weird contortions or worrying about stepping on unsupported, poorly cantilevered boards. Plus, I think the mailman and the UPS guy are thanking me for it...

This one is for Dad

This post is for my dad. He never reads my blog, but always wants to know what I'm doing on the house. It's not like he's a techno-phobe without internet access... - he's on the computer and the internet on probably a daily basis. I think it might be the word "blog"... so maybe if I shame him into it, he just may actually read...?

Anyway, everytime I talk to him on the phone lately, I'm trying to explain the v-groove I'm routing into the balusters. Last time I talked to him, we talked about what was going wrong with the router/table set up and what options I might need to do to make it better...

So Dad, here is the solution we came up with. It seems to work pretty well:



We put a piece of plexi on the table, and then routed up through the plexi to make the smallest opening necessary. Then we left the clamped fence that we originally had as is.

And here is what the routed v-groove on one of the balusters looks like:



This will sit on top of a base rail with a matching profile - as seen in the picture in this link. Does it make sense now Dad?

As I was routing all the balusters, I took a closer look at some of the one I did first and kept in the "good" pile. I looked at them close up, then put them up in rows on the stairs to see if I had them all together if I'd notice all the faults. Blah! I have gotten too good at making them. So even though this is what they look like from a distance:



This is what I will see every time I look at it:



So the first 10 are now in a bad pile!

But the priming has begun: