Rebuilding the 2nd floor porch

Well it's been another month since I last posted again... Things have been quite busy. Since the last post I've finished up the Airstream and then sold it, and then bought a boat.

That doesn't mean that there hasn't been any work done on the house though. I finally finished up the privacy fence in the back yard but I forgot to upload the pictures to my server so I cant get to them here at work. I'll post a few pictures in my next post. This last area (about 175') was the hardest to do because there are a lot of large old trees right along the property line and of course a 6' chain-link fence right up against where I put the privacy fence.

I know I was supposed to make some follow-up posts on all the other work done but I wasn't happy with the pictures and still haven't gotten around to taking more.

The other big project I've been working on is the second floor porch. This has been an eyesore since day one. We ripped the roof off last month and that helped but the deck was in really bad shape not to mention that it wasn't centered on the house and altered the pitch of the porch roof in front of it.

So this weekend I got to work. First I tore off the old plywood decking. This was pretty tough since they used about 5000 nails to hold it all down. Once the plywood was up there was of course another floor underneath it. this floor was old tongue & groove board:

I pulled up all the board and found another layer underneath. Under all the rotted leaves and dirt is a layer of tin followed by 1x6 boards.

I measured back to the point where I wanted the new deck to end then cut the tin off at that point:

Then I pulled off all the 1x6 boards in the same area:

I then removed the tin, 1x6's and joists from the left side of where the new deck will be:

The next morning I removed the siding from the front of the house and installed the roof trusses:

In the above picture you'll notice the 2x6 floor joists in front of where the deck is, these joists are holding up the deck but they need to be removed to restore the original pitch of the roof. What I did was to run pressure treated 2x6's alongside the old 2x4 ceiling joists then nailed 2x4 support braces between the 2x6 floor joists and the 2x6 pressure treated joists. I was then able to cut down the 2x6's to the length of the deck:

Then I ran the roof trusses in front of the deck:

Then I installed 3/4 plywood sheathing:


Yesterday afternoon I laid the felt down:


We've decided that the new deck is too wide so this afternoon I'm going to shorten it by 2 feet on either side. This shouldn't take too long to do then I can start laying the shingles. I also need to add beadboard to the exposed sides of the roof and of course add aluminum flashing to everything. Once all that is done I need to put down some type of weatherproofing for the deck then install 1x6 decking over it. Then I can install the railing.

Removal of the 2nd floor porch roof

Wow, a month since I posted last! That doesn't mean that there hasnt been any work going on here though. Just the opposite, I've been so busy working on the house that I havent had time to post. I'm going to have to break it all up into a few posts.

We FINALLY tackled the long awaited the 2nd floor porch roof demo! Here are a few pics of the work from a few weeks ago:








The last picture is as of yesterday, as you can see it makes a HUGE difference. The next task for the porch is ripping the second floor deck off completely and rebuilding a smaller one that will match the porch below.

I refinished our porch swing using a red chestnut stain and 2 coats of poly. We picked it up at a thrift store last year for $20:


We got some new furniture for the living room. Sorry for the blurry pictures, it's time for a new camera:



It's all jammed against the wall for now because of the pool table. We're selling the table though so hopefully it should be gone soon.

That's all I have time to post for now. I'll try to make another post some some of the other work that's been accomplished in the morning.

Progress on the upstairs guest bathroom

I've finally been able to make some progress on the house. I've done a few other small projects here and there but they haven't really been worth taking pictures of.

I decided that I needed to get back in the guest bathroom. You may remember how it was left last June.


I've been dreading the thought of getting back in there.

A few weeks ago I finally got all the plaster bagged up and removed and yesterday I removed all the lathe off the walls and vacuumed up the rest of the plaster.





With all the debris out of the way I was able to get into the kitchen ceiling crawl space and insulate most of it with R30. I'll be finishing that up this morning.

Today I'll be taking the ceiling beams down so I can raise them up a foot like I did in the Master bathroom this past spring. You can see how the ceiling turned out in this post. I'll also be removing the knob & tube wiring and rewiring with romex.

I'm still debating on what to use for the ceiling. I was going to just use greenboard since I dont have enough wood, but I'm probably going to be removing the second floor porch roof which would give me plenty of tongue & groove boards.

FINALLY! An old picture of the house!

Work has been progressing very slowly here. A lot of other things have been going on and it's hard to get back into that work mode in the little bit of free time I've had.

I've been working in the upstairs guest bathroom, check here if you don't remember how it looked when I left it last June. It doesn't look much different now except that I cleaned up all the plaster and I've removed almost all the lathe off the walls. The next step is going to be to remove the ceiling joists and rebuild them a foot higher like I did in the Master Bathroom.

With that out of the way, the only real news I've got is that I FINALLY got an old picture of the house!! It only took a year and a half of constant searching. One of the relatives that came to visit last week mailed me a picture of the house.

The picture appears to be from the 40's or early 50's. It says Aunt Helen's house on the back so it would have to be sometime between 1945-1955. What surprised me the most was that the house was apartments even back then. In the picture you can see the second floor deck and just barely make out the stairs on the left side of the porch. I believe at this point it was only two apartments, Helen and Kitty-Clyde lived downstairs and rented out the upstairs.



I took a picture of the house now in the exact same spot as the old picture:

Another thing I was surprised to see is that you cant see the huge oaks in the backyard above the roof of the house. I guess they've grown a lot in the last 60 years. The tree in front of the house is long gone, I believe it was an Elm. The large branch in the upper right of th picture was from the huge old Pecan tree next to the house, the tree is still there but the branch was removed at some point because it was too close to the house.

I was happy to see that I came pretty close on the porch railings. My railings are a little higher than the originals but otherwise look very similar. I will probably lower them later on to match the originals.

I'm also going to remove the second floor porch soon. For now I will remove the roof of the porch and cut the 4x4 columns off at the top of the railings. This should make it look very close to the old picture. Eventually I'm going to remove the it entirely and rebuild a much smaller deck in between the two upper windows. It will be just wide enough for a rocking chair on either side of the door. I'll also make it less deep, that way I can restore the original pitch of the porch roof without it looking like it was hacked into place like it does now. I may add some type of columns and small hip roof to it eventually.

Rear porch demo and beginning on the rear deck

I've started building the deck in the back yard. I'm doing this project now because I want it done before the 4th of july. we're planning on having a big cookout with a lot of family and friends over.

Before I could start building the deck I had to demo the old, rotted back porch... of course. It seems like I cant start any project without a little demo work first. Here is the back porch from an old picture of the house:

First thing I did was rip the screen out, take out all the 2x4 posts and remove the gutter.

Then I got on the roof and removed the shingles.

I then removed about 2/3 of the boards. I'm leaving the rest for now until the deck is built. Then I'll take it down and build another small overhang in it's place.

then I cut the supports and removed them and the 4x4 corner posts. then I cut the stairs in half since I'll be using them temporarily until the deck's built. Then I removed the floor boards and the joists.



It's hard to see from the last picture but there is a very old brick walkway in front of the stairs. I'll leave it there for now, once I find a use for the bricks I'll remove them from under the deck.

Now it's on to building the deck. I made a quick sketch of my idea for the design of the deck then figured out the measurements.

With that done the first thing I needed to do was hang the ledger boards, these are the boards that attach to the house. First I measured and cut out the siding:


Then I began hanging the ledger boards, not a fun task to do by yourself with pressure treated 2x8x12's.


I'm bolting the ledger boards to the house with 4 1/2" lag screws. Left, right, and center are doubled then there will be a single between each joist.



This is a fairly large deck so I want it to be as sturdy and safe as possible. The joists will be 2x8's. The beams will be 2x10's and the posts will be 4x6's. Because the joists will be running from left to right on the left deck I'll be running the beam under 3 sides of the deck with 7 posts. The joists will be running out from the house on the right deck so I'll be using a single beam with 3 posts, and 3 other single posts between the beam and the house.

I finished all the ledgers yesterday evening.


Today I'll be working on the posts and beams. I have 4 days scheduled for the deck, let's see if I can stay on schedule.

Big changes

A lot has changed since the last post. I went back to the bank, got a 6 month extension and also got more money. This will allow me to get all the things I need done quickly as well as add a few other things. This extended my project time by over a month but I believe it's well worth it. A few of the things added to the list is a deck, rebuild of the front porch, painting the house, and plumbing upgrades.

The other day I finished painting the second guest bedroom. I used the same blue that we used in the dining room.




Sorry about all the spots, there was dust on the camera lens. The trim still needs to be painted and we still have to figure out what to do with the fireplace and doors, paint them or poly them.

I started hanging the pendant lights in the kitchen. Only one of them are up at this point, I should do the other one today or tomorrow.


Over the weekend we tackled the front porch. The wrought iron railings were ok but we really wanted wood baulisters and railings. In the shot below you can see the old iron railings, they appear to have been put in sometime in the 40's or 50's:


I removed the iron railings (we're going to use them in our garden) then built and installed the new railings in a day.



The baulisters are $2.29 from Lowes but they didn't have hand rails long enough so I had to make my own our of 2x4's. I put a bevel on either side of the top railing as you can see in the above picture.

The top rails are anchored into the wood portion of the column. The bottom rails had to be anchored into the brick.I used a Forstner bit on the bottom rail about 2" from the edge then used a 3/8's bit to create a channel to the edge of the board. Then I drilled a 3/8's hole in the brick and installed an anchor bolt. Then I brought the bottom rail up from underneath and thghtened the bolts. The hole will be covered with a small piece of board. I forgot to take a picture of this but you should be able to see it in the above picture. If anyone has any questions on it I can take a picture of it later and post it.

I will be rebuilding the second floor porch. We still haven't decided how we want it though. Once we do it will have balisters like the 1st floor just a bit thinner though.

The next project is the shutters. We decided on board & batten style since it's easy to build. I'm using 1" thick 1x4's and 1x6's to build them.


Once we paint the house the shutters will either be black or dark green. the house itself will be some type of pale green or olive and the trim will be an off white.

Next I'll be finishing off the shutter for the front of the house, painting the Foyer, installing the other pendant light then starting the demo for the old porch so I can begin the deck.