Back to the Porch

In the time we have lived in the house, we will have rebuilt the front stairs three times. Once the week before our wedding (because the original, collapsed stairs looked terrible), once after we finished the foundation replacement, and again, now. There's plenty of evidence that the front porch has fallen down and been rebuilt at least a couple of times before that, too.

There is just a persistent moisture problem that makes the wood rot in that location. We hope to solve that in this iteration of the rebuilding, adding vents for air circulation and I'm thinking a little fan to force moisture out from under the house.

If that doesn't knock this problem back I'm thinking we will need to put down a moisture slab in the crawlspace, which is something I'd been planning to do at some point, anyway, because for one thing it would make it a lot cleaner to go work on things down there, not that I hope to be doing a lot of projects under the house any more. And this time I'm putting a moisture meter down there so I don't get my first notice that it's still damp down there when somebody puts a foot through a riser.

Anyway, Woody brought on a couple of labourers who are stripping paint like crazy, and they've started work on the front porch. The outside of the porch is new wood siding we put on, the inside is original. There's some evidence that the porch pony walls should be wider, so he's going to make that happen. We also have a box full fo the original porch trim pieces, which are being stripped to be reinstalled eventually.

(By the way, isn't my hydrangea looking great? Especially considering it spent a year under some scaffolding.)

There's some more stuff happening inside and on the east side, but it's a little subtle now. I did go through and take some "before" pictures of some of the pink inside before it goes away. Not that it will particularly be missed.

posted by ayse on 08/09/18