Phutu...back to the drawing board...

7/20/2005 I was all set to take off one day last week to go hiking in the east bay when I got into a discussion with Dory about her maternity leave and realized that we only had a couple weeks left. I scrapped the hike idea, and decided to get to work on rebuilding the front porch. Ever since we moved in I have known that there was a problem with the porch. Whenever it gets wet the water drains back toward the house and pools in the corner, then eventually leaks through the fiberglass coating and down into the basement. So, whenever there was a good rainstorm, or I watered the plants too much, we had a little dripperfall down there. Worse even than that were the steps. During the middle of last winter I noticed that most of the treads (the part that you actually step on) were cracked; you could see through them to the ground below. This made Dory quite nervous and I was annoyed by it. But I realized that I couldn't rebuild the steps without first doing the porch since I wouldn't know how high the top step had to be until the porch was re-sloped to drain the water away from the house.

I was standing around contemplating how to get started when my neighbor Shane showed up to see what I was doing. We had the whole thing ripped apart and into the back of the truck and were on our way to the city dump before I knew it. Demolition is the easiest part of construction...it's not really construction at all. I was sure that I could get the porch framed in and covered in a couple days. We bought some lumber at Home Depot (which I do not usually frequent...see this story on Frontline about Wal-Mart and extrapolate)and headed back to get started. Four days later I was still mired down in reframing the porch. Getting the slope exactly right so that the water would drain properly was a little harder than I thought. In the end there were four floor joists that ran the length of the porch and it took me a day for each of them. After much debate I decided not to cover it with tile as I had originally planned. I selected tongue & groove floorboards like what the house had originally. Once painted and when properly maintained I expect that they will last 100 years like the original porch did. Shane and I took a full three days to get them all installed since we were painting the ends and T & G sides as we put them in. It was a horrendous mess with all the oil based paint, and the last couple boards took me three tries each since I was tired and annoyed.

Once that was completed I proceeded to rip out the steps and start rebuilding them. There was a massive concrete block at the bottom, that was too thick and which caused one to hiccup when climbing the steps. The lowest three steps were each 7 inches high followed by the fourth concrete one at 8 inches and the first wood one at 6 inches. On stairs that is a recipe for disaster. I was too cheap to rent a jackhammer to break up the block so instead I levered it into the truck with the help of some large lumber and my brother. I think that it weighed about 600lbs. In the process I managed to put a large gash on the side of the truck. Once I was standing there with it in the bed, contemplating, I concluded that it had been a white trash moment not to get a jackhammer and break it up.

The next day I got some cement and built a form to pour a new footing for the steps. I sunk some bolts into the cement to attach the wooden section. It took me a whole day to cut the stringers(the notched boards) and another day to get them positioned. Then another day to cut the posts and attach them and get the first tread in.

As I write this it is day three of my new stay-at-home father job. The last three days have seen almost no progress on the project...which is why I was trying to get it done before Dory returned to work. I did manage to get a couple treads in but that's it. Actually, Dory is home from work for the day so I am going to head down to the basement and start making more parts. At the current rate I'll have it all done in a couple months.

7/5/2005
6/17/2005
5/27/2005
5/1/2005
4/15/2005
4/5/2005
3/24/2005
3/13/2005
2/5/2005
12/28/2004
11/29/2004
11/3/2004
10/2/2004
9/10/2004
8/23/2004
8/8/2004
7/21/2004
7/2/2004
6/8/2004
5/4/2004
4/20/2004
3/28/2004
3/10/2004
2/10/2004
1/15/2004

To reach entries prior to January 2004 click on one of the older entries on this list and scroll down to the bottom of that entry.

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