Actual Progress - Porch Railings

We had a spot of good weather last weekend, and painted the new railings on the front steps. These are before railing, before painting, and after railing and painting shots.


The house from the northwest corner, last summer. The japanese maple kind of gets in the way, sorry. Note the gray concrete, the wide steps with metal railings.







Long after the metal railings removed (in order to replace porch flooring) and the painting of the concrete steps and new porch floor.









The not-quite-final product. We have lots of detail-work/finishing to complete before we can cross this project off the list. But most of the big stuff is done.




Here's a link to the entry about when Mike built the railings, last January.

Front Railing

When we re-floored the porch in August, we took out the original railing, and have needed a new one ever since. Now that Mater Dommus Paterni has come and gone -- so it's too late to help her up or down the steps -- we have finally gotten a railing installed. It's another great job by Mike the Contractor.

The steps have been these huge concrete things that HomoDomi has hated forever. This summer, we painted them (brown and red ), and that was a vast improvement. But there's been no railing, of course, and it was both bare-looking and dangerous.

To mask the width of the steps, we've put a big box around one side. We have to wait to paint the railings until it is drier and warmer -- we will mimic the look of the rest of the porch railing: green on the top and soft butter yellow for the rails.

And around the big box we'll put lattice to match the rest of the underporch look, too. Come summer, we'll set pots of flowers on it.

It's hard to see in the photos (it is difficult to get far enough away to see the whole front of the house unobstructed), but the box, which seems heavy and unbalanced in these shots, works to balance the long stretch of porch on the right. In the summer, when the wisteria is fully leafed out, it will look much less bare. I am going to have to replant the left hand (north west) corner of the house, of course (there's a hydrangea there that has now been put in full shade and blocked from anyone's view).

Aside from the painting, there remains only the question of a cover for the box -- we waiver back and forth between galvanized steel, or copper ($160 more). I think long-run (i.e., after kitchen is paid for) it would look best with a copper top (bent over the edge of the box) and copper gutters across the front of the house, with a copper rain-chain hanging down the left corner (behind and over from the box). But we have to live with it for a while and get a sense of what's needed, not to mention a sense of what it will look like in sun and with greenery around it.

A same-spot shot of the porch from August.
A view of the porch from last July, long before the renovations, and in sunny summer.

Painted Steps

The actual re-painting of the concrete steps didn't take that long, although it required, in advance, re-sweeping, re-washing, and letting the concrete re-dry -- while waiting for the weather to warm up to 60° so the paint would dry quickly.

(Molly is wearing a party hat to remind us that her birthday is very soon, although not as soon as she would like. She wears it every day after school.)

The red is a much nicer color than the tan stain was, bold and bright. At least 4 people have stopped on the street to compliment us on the color and the overall effect. One of these was a complete stranger (a mother picking up her child at the pre-school in the church next door; she said she's been watching us at work all summer).

Another was a neighbor -- the one with the tidy lawn which ends abruptly at the sidewalk with no stray grass-blades hanging over the pavement. You know, that neighbor, the one we all have. We sense in their approval also a vastly relieved sigh, that the neighbors (i.e., us) have once again pulled back from the precipice of Trailer Trash Yard.

Personally, I'd give the red a 90 out of 100, where 100 is the ideal color. I expect the dark green that I had wanted would have been a 92 -- assuming it was the shade of green that I thought it was, and not the shade of green that Mel thought it was, which would have clashed. Mel is better with colors than I am, so she's probably right. Even so, a difference of 2 points -- and when the red works well enough -- is certainly not worth a re-paint.

The final photo is by Molly, if you hadn't guessed from the shadow-silhouette (showing pigtails), of the stairs at the base of the entry sidewalk. Another artsy shot.

Staining the steps

So, we were unable to get the old paint off the concrete. And let me say, we all hated the old paint. It is kind of a gray-blueish white, and once cleaned, the stairs and walkway looked ghastly against the green house and red brick pathway (demonstrating that cleanliness is not always a good thing). Faced with the choice of choosing a paint (a choice involving going out again to Home Depot, and then having to decide on a color -- I don't know which part of the task is more dreaded), or just trying out the stain, because we already have a gallon: we stained.



Not much to say -- the pictures say it all. The stain -- which admittedly I just slapped on -- is streaky, blotchy and too transparent. It just looks dirty, and not even as nice as the nice balanced layer of dirt that had been there before we cleaned.

Actually the front looks kind of nice if you stand across the street, maybe because the tree blocks much of the view. However, we haven't a force field to install to keep all viewers of the house at least 45 feet away. Tomorrow we paint. The question is now, Green or Brick Brown?

A tool we don't like!

We rented a professional water pressure spray-gun, in an attempt to spray the paint off the concrete walkway. The plan was to chip off/get rid of the paint, and then stain the bare concrete (to save us having to buy paint -- we already had bought stain). The spray-gun loaned to us by a friend (which I talked about earlier) chipped bits of paint off, but it was a slow process. Two separate neighbors, and the rental shop, assured us that the professional version would gouge out the concrete itself, if we weren't careful with our aim.

It runs on gas, starting with a pull-rope like a lawn mower, and much louder. It's a lot more powerful than the "amateur" version, and comes with four different nozzles (3350 units of pressure, whatever that means -- the amateur one is about half that). The nozzles vary the shape of the water (from a wide 75° angle ring, through 40° and 25° to a pinpoint) and the force of the water (with pinpoint being enough to gouge concrete). (The fourth nozzle was labeled "chemical" and I didn't figure out what shape that was, but from its position in the row, it was less forceful than the widest-angle nozzle).

Curiously, no paint chipped. Or very little did. And Andrew, the Operator, said it felt dangerous and rather unpleasant to use, so he stopped trying after only a few minutes. I think we ran the thing for less than half an hour, in fact.

On the other hand, we loooove the amateur spray-gun, which will also take off paint (more slowly than the other) but without the feeling that it might leap out of your hands at any moment and scour off your skin.

The professional (rentable) high pressure water spray-gun is the first tool we haven't liked.

The Wonderful High-Pressure Water Spray-gun

One of the list items under Finish the Porch, is Stain the Ugly Concrete Stairs. They are a dirty gray-brown. Andrew thought the church had put a quick slip of cement over them just before selling the house, and has intended to get rid of the steps or at least improve them since they moved in.

Today we bought special cement stain, and borrowed a high-pressure water spray-gun from a friend. This puts out water at a rate about half of the professional spray-guns (which you can rent from Home Depot), but the friend said it was perfectly adequate for cleaning moss and dirt off steps before staining them.



It works like a charm -- pull the trigger, point and spray. And the dirt disappears as if you were spray-painting Clean all over it.

We are left now with a clean step and front walk. And the discovery that it wasn't a cement slip, after all, but paint that the church slapped on before selling the house. So we aren't sure the stain is going to work -- but it is not returnable, so we'll try it before anything else. One option is to rent a professional spray-gun and shoot the paint off -- even the spray-gun we have, given time to work its magic, will push off the paint. Whatever we do, we have to do it soon -- the walk and steps look horrible -- pallid gray with patches where the paint has pulled off. The dirty steps were at least a rather warm and homogeneous brown.

Another use for the spray-gun is the pathway bricks. It turns out that the sprayer melts the mortar off the bricks like butter. So I spent a very fun hour this afternoon shooting off mortar, cleaning 80% of the bricks in the time it would have taken me to scrape 5% of them (and more thoroughly than by hand).

The "new" porch

Somehow I'm feeling very relieved, like I just got something off my chest. Maybe it's the "new" porch.

It isn't actually new, of course -- just the floorboards, and the yellow paint. I suppose technically the corner where Andrew is sitting is new, because it didn't exist when the stairs were there. And those are new rugs on the floor (Ikea throw rugs). And the furniture was bought in May, so it's newer than any other furniture in the house.

We find ourselves sitting out there quite often now -- usually in the afternoon, when the sun filters through the oak tree and the space just glows. This photo was taken this morning.

The cats in particular love it. Abby is shown here in her customary spot (we turn the cushions over to sit on them ourselves, because they are grey with cat hair). Boris and Natasha have been known to spend the night sleeping there, each on a chair (Abby comes in at night).

More Progress on the Porch

Having made our arrangements for the annual visit to the childhood stomping grounds, we now have only 4 days left before school starts, generally speaking, to finish any summer projects. So our high priority hats are on, and we are being expedient. We have five must-finish items to complete before leaving.

Thus, the porch is painted, but not detailed. The railings need to be painted the same yellow as the floor; the wall of the house needs to be washed, the holes we created or filled (or both) in the structure need to be painted over. We have to add molding in various places; we have to finish the railings down the front stairs. And paint them. Of this list, only Build the Railings (#4) is on the list to finish by Friday. Mel and Anne can paint when we're gone, or it can wait until we get back.

The porch does look nice, doesn't it? Note the furthest chair is resting on porch floor that didn't used to be there -- that's where the stairs up from the driveway were. The railing behind it is new, too (built by Andrew, of course).

Today, the item we completed was #1) Planting the Wisteria. We bought a large wisteria plant about a month ago, just before starting the bike cellar. We wanted to plant it in the center of the garden in front of the porch, so that it will spread up and over, and shade the whole porch. We realized after we got it home that the space where we wanted to plant it was already filled with 1) the stump of the old beautiful camellia tree, 2) the rain gutter outflow-to-sewer pipe and 3) the main gas line into the house. It's taken this long for us to get Moving the Stump Out (carefully) to the top of the list. That, and planting the wisteria, and then replanting the box elder, scabiosa, and poppy that I had to move so we could dig/saw out the stump, took all day. It doesn't look like much in the picture, but the green fuzzy thing (i.e., wisteria) in the middle was a pain to install.

We also half completed Item #3: Clean the Yard (we've been the poor white trash of the neighborhood for a month now). You may get a sense (photo above) for how the front looked in late afternoon, but here's a shot of the yard this morning. It's still pretty trashed on the other half of the yard and the driveway, however. (Note the white cat stretched out in the sun under the sawhorse.)

Porch Painting

Today we finished prepping (filling in all the holes we could find, sanding, sweeping, washing) the porch and then primed and painted it once. We'll have to paint it again before we're through. Andrew is building the railing at the top of the stair. It and the columns are being repainted too, which requires that we wash the house wall (the fresh paint elsewhere makes that look shabby).

Photos tomorrow, when it is closer to finished. In the meantime, it's an I Spy game. I spy with my little eye something that begins with "H". He's been keeping us company for several hours every day in the garden in front of the porch, apparently unfazed by the noise and construction.

On the Eighth Day, We Finished the Porch

Technically, we only worked on solely the porch for six days, but we feel as if we started on it last Tuesday, when we bought the lumber. (If you recall, we then finished other projects and fought the heat for a couple of days before starting). But however long it took, the main part is done now.

We started the end with a couple of new boards -- 14' 2x6s, which we used to form an extra strut to support the porch floor. It turns out that Home Depot is geared towards contractors (okay, we're slow). It cost $10 for these two humongous boards -- it would have cost $8 for boards half that length. So it's cheaper to buy in bulk. Andrew said it was dicey driving home with wood sticking this far out of the car.

We also rented Andrew's current favorite tool, an Angle Nail Hammer. This is a totally cool sort-of stapler which you position over the porch board and then whack with a hammer (once if you're big and beefy, three times if you're wimpy and at the end of the day). It drives a nail-like staple in at a perfect 45 degree angle, affixing your porch board permanently to whatever you're hammering it on to (which very occasionally, unfortunately, is not the thing you intended to hammer it on to).

We decided in the end to solve the length problem with a 10" wide "threshold" in front of the door (a slab of pine) -- so in front of the door, we only needed the 7' boards. You can see the white board in place under/in front of the door in the picture. For the 40 inch space to the left of the door we pieced porch boards together to make 8' combinations with 7' planks. This involved sawing the boards into combinations that would add up to 8' and which coincided with where there was a strut to nail it to and which kept the seams far from the rain danger of the front of the porch (leaving only the options of 1' + 7' and 2' + 6'). This meant that I learned how to use the Skilsaw, so that Andrew could be punching the Angle Nail Hammer on one board as I prepped the next.

The final product is very fine. It is thrilling to walk on this tight, non-creaking, solid surface, that we put together ourselves in only a few hours. There is some metaphor in the fact that we were able to repair and build the floor underneath our feet. Perhaps it is particularly poignant to us because we spent several days in the "pit" created by the porch walls, so we are quite aware of how the porch floor is 3 feet above ground. To me, it still feels like I'm walking in air when I walk across it.

The work is not entirely finished of course. We would just stain the wood if the whole porch were in this pretty wood, but half is still the old green, so the whole thing will be painted. So next, there is patching, priming, and painting (butter yellow) to do (my job) while Andrew finishes the balustrade and the railing down the steps.

Ready to Rent

.... rent the Angle Nail Hammer, that is, from Home Depot. This is the tool we need to pin the porch boards onto the supporting struts.

Today we finished with all the supporting structure. I slightly exaggerated yesterday's prediction of "only an hours' worth left to finish". It is all soporifically boring (and I'm amazed that you're still coming back to read the blog, after posts about this project), so I won't go into the details, but trust me, the porch is well shored up. I seriously believe it could withstand an earthquake (well, a small one). Now we have only to secure one additional strut -- for attaching the short boards -- and then put in the porch boards, 3" x 7' at a time. I'd say it won't take long, but that would jinx us.

In the photo, Andrew is planing the frontmost board to make it the right height for the floorboards (remember the slope from door to stairtop?). Both of us are so tired of this particular adventure that we ran out of steam about 4 this afternoon. Andrew switched over to the much more exciting project of adding electricity to the under-porch cellar.

Dry Rot!

And the adventure continues. Today, as planned, the first thing we did was get all the surprises out in the open. We removed the threshold plank, and yes, discovered that the 2 - 2x6s under it (that which supported our bodies so softly as we stepped onto the porch) were completely rotted out.

Then we figured out that, for some unclear reason, the column support of the porch roof -- the one on the left as you face the house -- was supported itself only on 2 out of 4 sides (the column is hollow), and also that the rotted out wood was the primary part of the support.

And then we figured out that the central column of the three at the front of the porch, while nicely propped up on all four sides of the column itself, was only kept from crashing to the ground by being nailed to the porch ceiling, and by resting on the mostly rotted 2x6 threshold board, itself resting on a 2x4 coming up from the ground about 2 feet away. Unfortunately, we figured this out after cutting the board out.

So there were several rather urgent minutes of grabbing a jack and a new length of wood, and propping the column back up again between the structural supports that Andrew had added in the storage chamber. (The porch had only sagged about 1/4" to 1/3" in the meantime).

It took all day (we had to stop at 9 p.m. due to noise laws), but we are finally back to only about an hours' worth of work until we are at the point we thought we were at last night.

No pictures yet of the newly rebuilt and finally supported front of the porch. But isn't the hydrangea pretty? I hope it survives the construction.

Measure Thrice, Cut Once -- and still cut wrong

My last post was about Tuesday night, and the decision about the lumber for the porch.

On Wednesday, Andrew Hung a Door (check my earlier post -- I can't figure out how to link to my own posts yet).

On Thursday we didn't get much done (ibid.).

On Friday night, in the mosquito-biting dark I mentioned before, we encountered our first major setback.

During the day, we had prepped for the porch floor installation -- pulling off the old wood (not as easy as we expected); removing gazillions of long rusty nails; adding Rotten Wood Repair Filler to the supporting aged 2x6s; leveling the floor of the crawl space (because without a porch floor we could stand, so it was a lot easier to rake than after the floor/roof is installed); laying a tarp over the space to discourage its continued use as Neighborhood Preferred Litter Box, etc.

(I made Andrew take a photo of me pulling nails to prove that I really do some of the work, not just take photos and comment upon his work.)

So, the next thing was to add another strut for the ends of the tongue-and-groove boards to attach to. (Mel is, in fact, screwing the bolts into that very support strut in the picture.) And then (if you recall) we were planning to replace the current 2x8 board -- the "threshold" -- that lays across the top of the steps with a 2x11, which would kiss the ends of the porch boards. In the photo, the current 2x8 (which is rounded and half-rotten) has the drills and box of screws resting on it.

Things went quickly downhill from there. The first thing we realized is that the newly added support was higher than the others, even though it was placed at the right height to meet the threshold at the top of the concrete steps.

The whole porch is built on a slightly-off-from-90-degree angle from the house, so that any water rolls away from the house towards the steps and the garden. The higher support would mean a) that water would roll back towards the house instead, and b) that the porch floor would be spongy -- you'd step on a cushion of air rather the solidity of being supported. That also means c) the porch floor boards would only be supported by two struts, about 7' apart (the two between my boot and Mel's back would not actually support or even touch the porch boards).

If we lowered the support strut, then the boards would be lower than the threshold, giving the water a perfect place to pool and start the rotting process over again. Damned if you do...

The second thing we realized was that we actually need 7'6" long boards, not 7'3" as we had measured. And had measured again. (We had measured repeatedly from a point in front of the door, which has a short extra sill -- a sill 3" deep, to be exact. You can sort of see the dark brown sill in the photo of me, above. We had reliability, but not validity, in our measurements.) The 2x11 option (of making a broader threshold at the top of the stairs) can't be extended to 2x14, at least, not without using two lengths of wood, which brings with it a seam down the middle and more chances of pooling water and fast rotting. The lumber we have is all 7' 0", if you recall.

This is all very hard to describe. The picture at left may illustrate adequately. I am standing on the steps to take the photo. The green at the bottom is the current "threshold", that oft-mentioned 2x8 laid flat at the top of the concrete steps. The line of wood just above that is our newly added strut (from which we've removed all but one bolt, so it's just resting there at the moment). The original struts cross the photo leading into the distance. You can see that the floorboard (coming down from the top) doesn't meet the strut. Damn it.



Solutions?

We have $250 of porch floor boards, and more importantly, a huge hole where the porch used to be, so we're not going back now. The current plan is to kill two problems with one, um, one laying of porch floor. We are going to pull the boards out all the way to the garden end of the top concrete step, so that water rolls all the way down and off onto concrete: nothing to rot. (Andrew will put a thin facing on the front of the step, so that you don't see raw ends of the porch boards.) Back at the "house-side" of the porch, all these boards will now end a full 12" from the outer wall of the house. There we will "patch", with a column of 12" long boards. With careful sawing, sanding, filler and paint, Andrew believes it won't show at all.

I have a bad feeling about putting all our ends on one plane (so to speak) and have raised the suggestion that we stagger the lengths of the boards across the whole space. This is what we feared that we would have to do on Tuesday, but now it seems little more work (to me) than the other plan, and it seems structurally more sound, too (although Andrew has convincing arguments for why it won't make a difference).

In any case, tomorrow we start by lifting the infamous "threshold" 2x8 plank and seeing what there is below it, which appears to be more wood, on top of concrete. We will do this before we commit to the other porch-boards-across-the-threshold plan. "No more surprises," Andrew said.

Huh? Ripping up the Porch Floor?

Sorry, my adoring readers, for not checking in for a couple of days. There has not been time for blogging: the deadline of Anne and the children's return has been a nervous litany in the backs of our minds. "12:30 p.m. Sunday. Gotta get done by 12:30 Sunday. It will all be too late on Sunday," muttered into our respirators in the misty overcast of morning, the unforgiving sun of midday, the dusty breezes of evening, and in the mosquito-ridden dark after sunset. (Yes, mosquitoes! In Portland! What hast thou wrought, O climate change?) We've been working hard. (And last night Ray came over for beers and grown-up games on the Wii, so there wasn't time for blogging then, either.)

Read this post as if it were written last Tuesday, when it would have been were I not out late at erudite book readings and fine dining (that is, a "demodern post-constructionist metafictional novel" and half a tuna sandwich and beer at McMenamins).

The under-porch storage project is independent of the porch-floor replacement, except that we're working in that part of the house anyway, and we need to put flooring/roof over the steps down into the new cellar. The porch floor has needed replacement since they purchased the house. Due to years of no maintenance and bad gutters (replaced a few years ago by Andrew), standing water near the steps had rotted out the wood. (Here's a little known fact: the porch was carpeted in Astroturf when they moved in.)

Not quite half the porch needs replacement, just the part at the head of the concrete steps. Simple enough to do -- pull off the old boards, slide in the new ones, prime, and paint. We figured it would take a day, maybe two when including unexpected surprises. Ha ha.

The first challenge was to find replacement lumber. The boards on the porch, presumably from 1915, but maybe from 1957 when the house was remodeled, are 3" tongue-and-groove boards long enough to extend from door to step without seams (about 7'). We needed about 40 new boards. Rejuvenation House sells them for $1.86 a linear foot -- or over $500. Ugh. Home Depot sells a cheaper version -- about 3-1/2" wide (which we could accommodate, though they wouldn't match the other, older part of the porch). However, the Home Depot lumber is about 1/4" - 1/2" thinner than the original lumber. The thinner board works with modern construction techniques, where the supporting struts are no more than 18" apart, but this older building has them about 24" or more apart. The Home Depot porch boards would sag pretty quickly, and be more liable to break.

Then, on Tuesday, we were at Woodcrafters, a specialty store for working with hardwood. If you ever want to get a Ph.D. in whittling, this is the store to visit. Anyway, they carry kiln-dried wood of the size we needed, for $1.60 a linear foot -- cheaper than Rejuvenation House but not "cheap". They had only a couple of boards in stock, so we'd have to order more (missing that Sunday deadline). Also, theirs came in 12' boards, giving us the option of wasting a lot (we only needed about 7' a board) or being forced to make a patchwork floor -- requiring a lot more work in cutting, placement and "wood filling" the seams.

We decided to look for other possibilities, such as plain 3" boards along which Andrew could rout out the tongue-and-groove. (Whether that is less work than building a patchwork porch floor remains to be determined, but it would at least have been cheaper). But as we walked through the high-ceilinged aisles of precut lengths of Rosewood, Poplar, Cherry and Cedar, of moldings in Oak, Maple, Walnut and Hemlock, of raw lengths of Exotic Woods (teak from Congo, catalpa, wood I've never heard of, like bubinga) ... suddenly the clouds parted and light shone down in haloed rays, as the demonstration table-saw sang across the store like a thousand shrill voices : we came upon an unmarked palette, there at the back of the store, of literally a porch-worth of our desired 3" tongue-and-groove fir.

It turns out, a client had ordered a special-cut load, and then backed out of the deal. The contractor wanted to get the wood off his hands asap, so it was selling for a mere $1 a linear foot, on a first-come, first-serve basis. It was 5:30 and they close at 6:00, so decisions had to be made.

Problem is, the special cut boards were 7' long, with a handful of 9' lengths. But our 7' was a rough estimate -- we had measured the space, but were expecting to have to cut it when we got home, so hadn't been exact about how much we needed where. We raced home and measured the porch again. How many boards did we really need? Would 7' work or were we back to square one? Would we pay $1 a linear foot in any case and just patch?

We measured -- we needed 7'3" lengths. Thirty-five of them. The clock was ticking -- I had to battle traffic to get to the suburb where Jasper Fforde was speaking, and Andrew wanted to get back and buy the wood, if it was usable, before the store closed. And, after all, Anne and the children were due back in only 4 days.

Okay, we reasoned, we'll just replace the header board (a 2x8, visible in the photos up top) with a 2x11, gaining those three inches in a deeper threshold at the top of the stairs. This would have the added benefit of placing that seam (between end of tongue-and-groove and side of header board) a couple of inches further away from rain splashing off the steps. It would require adding a 4x4 in the structural struts (to nail the ends of the boards to) but that would be a relatively trivial thing to add and we already had the extra wood (we checked). In Portland speak, "No worries. No worries".

I dashed off in one direction for my erudite evening, and Andrew in another direction to buy lumber. He bought 36 boards, (sold in packs of 6), including all of the 9' (one pack), just in case. And we were set to go on the porch.

Porch Floors

We have little to complain about, about the weather, in Portland. Not as cold as Minnesota or Massachusetts in the winter, less humid and more sunny in the summer, with cool nights to offset the day's heat. It just softens us up for when the real weather happens. Back in La Grande in the '70s we'd joke scornfully about how Portlanders would close down the city after two inches of snow (as they still do). Wimps, we are.

So today was officially 87 degrees (my car read 91), low humidity, with lots of breezes. And it started out in the low 60's and already at 9:30 pm it's back down to 73. But it hit Andrew and I like a ton of bricks. We did not make much progress today.

We did rip up the porch floor. Okay, Andrew ripped up the porch floor. We didn't put it back together again however. There is a 20 inch wide strip of boards remaining in front of the door -- our morning paper is sure to fall into the hole, the crawl space, between concrete steps and front door.

Doors or Gates - what's the difference?

There hasn't been as much tangible progress on anything in the last couple of days as we would like. Much of yesterday was spent shopping for minivans (and in the evening, some of us went to hear Jasper Fforde -- he was marvelous, and I highly recommend going out of your way to hear him, not to mention reading one of his books, of which the latest is First Among Sequels). And much of today was spent in PTA interactions.

However, that is not to indicate that no progress has been made. Andrew has Hung A Door. (Technically, it's a gate, but we're referring to it as a door.) This was not insignificant to do (problems with less than 90 degree angles and gravity and tiredness -- the first door he made was 7 " too long due to an oversight). And now the frame is causing problems: it is wonderfully straight, but it is 3/4 inch offset from the house "wall" beside it, so it sticks out a little. Andrew has a 1/4 inch tolerance, so this means Measures Must Be Taken. What they will be, I'm not sure yet.

Let me back up. The picture of Andrew in a red shirt was taken last Sunday. This photo predates the stairs; I (the camera) am standing on the edge of the porch, at the head of where stairs up used to be (you can see the outline of them in painted concrete slip along the house wall next to Andrew in the photo).

The second photo was taken about 9:30 tonight. Andrew is in a black shirt, and much sunburnt (it has been hot and dry; it was 92 degrees today). The stairs down are sort of visible -- they are red, Andrew is standing on the top one. The door is framed in properly -- the hefty 4x4 his left hand is resting upon is the lintel. You can see the skeleton of the door hung in the space (the black hinges are a giveaway). The two struts stretching from lintel towards my feet are the props that will support the porch floor when we put it in. The door will be trellis on the top half (to match the trellis elsewhere on the porch) and solid on the bottom half.

We've also decided (one of those Royal "we"s) not to encase the whole unit in plastic as originally intended. Someone pointed out the plastic might be quite noisy in a wind storm, of which we get many; and the winters aren't so bad here that we need to keep the contents of the space warmer than they will be next to the house anyway. The primary need was secure, covered, space, and that we'll have.

Tomorrow: The Porch Floor.

Continuing Under-porch Storage

Today was the last wall, the stairs, and a start on the brick flooring.

Andrew slipped down the hole a couple of nights ago, so the stairs have been rather high priority -- but have needed lots of work and waiting time. Concrete on the back; supports on the back; fitting and painting the treads with sandy paint so it will offer footholds in the rain.

Today's pictures are of the floor (half done) and of Andrew cleaning the mortar off the bricks. The bricks are left over from the chimney, and thus still coated with lots of mortar. You rub two mortar-covered bricks together, however, and the stuff dusts off. Andrew likes to do it dry, with a respirator on (it can't be good for the lungs) -- I prefer to soak the bricks the night before so it comes off as a heavy wet sand. To each his own.

The floor is already more advanced than shown here -- Andrew worked again until there was no light left. It is simply the broken bricks (with a sinuous pattern of a couple lines of unbroken bricks) laid down , with sandy gravel poured over and between. There is also a layer of larger gravel on the dirt hidden behind the walls, again to slough off any rain that comes in.

In media res

I would have started this blog a couple of weeks ago, but I had been intending to start at the beginning of the project we are currently consumed with -- building a storage area under the front porch (for bikes and outdoor stuff, mostly). However, the disk with all the "Before" photos on it, in my camera, has crapped out, full of memory errors. I lost about 50 photos of "before" and "early-durings".

It was a setback. How could I start a blog intended to show progress on projects without any showing? But I'm past that now, and I have a new compact flash disk in my camera.

The photo above shows the area of the house we are working on -- under the porch on the right side, behind the climbing rose. There used to be a set of stairs coming up from the driveway - those are long gone. Instead, stairs (built, finally, today) will lead down, to a locked and generally air-proofed area carved out all the way to the concrete main stairs into the house.

Below are two comparison photographs (first, taken two days ago; second, taken tonight) showing sample progress. Here you can see Andrew standing in the space.


The camera is in the doorway, where the stairs-up were, and the stairs-down will be. Behind Andrew is a 14 x 10 foot span of clay at ground level. This large crawl space (which is what the whole porch under-area looked like before this project started) is a popular litter box area for all of our cats in the house and the neighborhood (spacious! convenient! outside, yet covered in the rain!). They usually enter through the "window" in the trellis at the back (and have continued to do so, undeterred by the construction nearby). That window will be closed up -- another loss of environment for the cats. We will not be digging that area out (it holds the water main and gas line into the house) but we will lay a tarp over it and use the area for storage as well.

All of the walls that you see were carved out from the clay under the porch-- we hired two teenagers (Will and Molly's baby-sitter and his girlfriend) to come dig; Andrew carted clay to the dumpster. They worked for 17 hours (over two days) and dug much of what you see here (or, as it happens, what you don't see here -- what was in the hole). It filled a 10 cubic yard dumpster of concrete and clay. In the week since, Andrew has carved out another 1/3 dumpster worth of dirt.

It's hard, back-breaking labor. Andrew has been working on this project almost literally from about 9 in the morning until after dusk every night since Tuesday 7/17 (even carrying on that schedule after reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows until 6 in the morning last Monday).

But you can see that he is, essentially, creating a new room, one that is about 8x7, complete with entrance stairs. Three walls will be wood (the concrete foundation of the house is the fourth wall), up to high-waist height; above that will be simple plastic sheeting, allowing light through the trellis that is fit all the way around the porch. The stairs went in partially tonight (wood over concrete) and will be finished tomorrow. He has some more framing to do, and then the brick floor will be installed (made with the broken bricks from the chimney we dismantled last April -- maybe I'll blog about that on a slow week). And last will come the electricity, a light inside and a light outside the door, on motion detector, to discourage burglars and allow later evening putaway of yard toys. Oh, and there's the door -- we're having lots of discussions about where the door should go, what it should look like, and which direction it should open.

We are all concerned, but not worried, about water runoff. This is an old house, with concrete foundational walls that are 9-10 inches thick. We do not have wet walls in the basement despite Portland's rain -- so we aren't much worried. But Andrew has taken much care to dig the storage room floor so that it slopes away from the house; the stairs have a lip to discourage rain water; the whole floor is brick over gravel over clay to encourage water to flow away.