Porch roof progress and Fence pics

Here are a few pics of the completed privacy fence:

This first one gives you an idea of the area I had to work with, not much room between the chain link fence and the tree line:

In the next pic, the neighbors house is on the right, you can see how close to the line their house is:
This last pic was taken from the neighbors yard:

The front porch roof is coming along. I shortened the deck by 2' on either side, I'm really glad I did because it looks a lot better.



In the above two shots I had the framing done but hadn't put the sheathing on the shortened area.

I finished the sheathing then felted it and then put up aluminium flashing in the areas that needed it. Next I started the shingles, the next 2 pics show how far I got yesterday before I ran out of nails and shingles:



Here's how it looks from the street:



Much better than it was.

This afternoon I'll be finishing off the shingling then taking the old wood that I tore off to the dump. Then hopefully I can install the decking and the railing.

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.

Punch list work

I know I never made a follow-up post on the exterior house painting but it will have to wait a while longer. I completed what I had to get done with the scaffolding so I could return it but that was it. I still have a lot of the back of the house to complete as well as about 3 feet of the bottom on both sides.

The reason I didnt finish is because we wanted to get our new (old) Airstream in usable condition so we could go on a small vacation. Now that we're back it's time to get this house finished already.

I had intended on coming back and removing the second story porch roof and then finish up the painting but I've decided to hold off on that for a few weeks until I have some help. It will go much faster that way. So in the mean time I decided to create a punch list of little things around the house that need to get done and have begun working on that.


I've been concentrating on the front of the house the past few days, mainly the foyer and the study. I finished staining the beadboard in the study but dont have any good pictures yet. I should be putting a coat of poly on it this afternoon.

I have begun work on the mantle in the study also. Most of the mantle is brick but it has a pine top piece. I stripped the 20 layers of paint off of it yesterday:


I will be shellacing it this afternoon. I've decided to find a brick red paint color and paint the brick for a few reasons. One, the paint is very hard to remove but also the brick underneath it is cement so it's gray, not red. I may try to paint the mortar lines gray then paint the brick red and then sponge it to make it look more realistic.

I've also been trying to finish the trim in the foyer. You may remember that the wall between the foyer and study was not original and was crooked so I tore it down and rebuilt it straight, giving the foyer an extra foot.

The old wall covered the edge of the front door frame so I used some of my salvaged trim to replace the missing pieces. This trim came from the upstairs bathroom and is the original trim design for the house so it matches the rest of the foyer:


I know I should have painted it first but I like to do stuff backwards. Besides, the door frame needed a touch-up coat of paint anyways.

By the way, the plywood is over the front door because the glass broke in the door. I'm sure replacing it is going to be costly.

Next I installed the picture rail on the new wall:


I've also installed the upper trim on the baseboards but still have to install the 1/4 round at the bottom of the baseboards. Once I do that and install the trim on the study doorway and paint everything the foyer will be completely done... well except for the broken glass in the front door that is.

More house painting

Things have been moving a little slower that expected. I've almost gotten the rght side of the house done. I have maybe 1 hour left on that side before I can move to the driveway side of the house. I should only have to do two setups of the scaffolding on that side.

Setting this scaffolding up by myself is a pain but I've worked out a bit of a system and can set it up in about 15 minutes and less than 10 to take it down. The hardest part is carrying the sections up the scaffolding during setup.

Here are a few pictures from the last two days:






I'm doing pretty good on paint, I've used less than a gallon on trim and about 2.5 gallons on the green so far. This is with the front completed, the right side almost completed and the back 1/2 completed. That's about 2/3's done. This exterior grade Valspar covers very well without using a lot.

House Painting

I was back to work painting the house yesterday. I went ahead and rented scaffolding for the entire week to get the rest of the house done. the scaffolding works great but the pain is having to tear it all down and rebuild it by myself every time I have to move on to the next section.




Setting the scaffolding up takes at least an hour. I'm painting out as far as I can on either side of the scaffolding to minimize the teardowns/setups. I would have gotten further but I lost about 3 hours of work, one for a short period of rain, the other 2 when someone came by to buy an old truck of mine. It took about 2 hours to get the thing on the tow dolly.

This is how far I got as of yesterday evening:


I probably could have finished this section before it got dark but the race came on so instead I got to watch Junior ALMOST win his first race in two years only to be wrecked by a DUMBASS with 2 laps left....

Anyways, I'll be back out there today painting. Hopefully I'll at least get this side of the house done.

Progress!! Painting the house

After a long break we have finally resumed work on the house. We are making our final push towards completing it once and for all.

Saturday morning I rented a 4000psi pressure washer and pressure washed the entire house. Surprisingly it only took about 4 hours. The house was really dirty and there was a lot of peeling paint.

After pressure washing we went and bought the paint, we had the colors we wanted picked out for about 2 weeks now. The colors we chose were Homestead Resort Pale Olive for the main color and Churchill white something or other for the trim. It has a slight yellow tint to it. Both are from the Historic Preservation collection from Valspar.

Here is a before picture of the house:

Here are a few shots after pressure washing:


On Saturday afternoon we were able to paint the front first floor of the house. I decided not to use the paint gun for the front of the house simply because of overspray and having to put drop cloths down. Instead I'm using a 4" brush.

This is a good before and after shot:


Sunday we painted the front second floor in between the storms and the race but we were able to finish the entire front of the house. The area above the porch was a bit difficult to get at first because the porch roof is a hip roof so I couldnt put a ladder on it.

I solved the problem by duct tapping a 4" brush at a 45 degree angle to the end of an extension pole. It really worked great, I was able to paint the area almost as fast as if I were painting with the brush alone. I've begun painting all the higher up places with this instead of having to constantly move a ladder.


Here is the front of the house all painted:


I will be removing the second floor porch roof sometime this week and then I'll finish painting the fascia and soffit in that area.

We're not quite sure what to do with the first floor porch paint-wise. I hate that the brick is painted, because of that I'll probably paint it with a brick red color. I saw a color at Lowes a while back that is very close to brick color. The railings are painted a very light cream color right now. We're not sure if we should paint the porch columns and fascia that color or with our trim color that is on the rest of the house. Suggestions...?

I'm going to have to rent scaffolding for the sides of the house. I have an extension ladder but I get really nervous on the thing that high up.

Oh, and for those of you who may not have noticed the new link in the sidebar we just bought a 1969 Airstream Sovereign 31'. I'll be restoring it soon. Here is a link to the blog I'll be keeping of the restoration: http://69airstream.blogspot.com/