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porch & exterior, part 9:
porch finishing details
making sure our tetanus shots are up-to-date
So we finally
had the house painted, but as with
everything else, that wasn't quite the end of the story. There were
the screens to build, of course, but
that still left a gazillion minute details to finish. Oy vey. And because
we tend to get waylaid quite a bit by other projects, and work, and life,
and, well, things that are way more fun than finish details, it kinda took
us awhile to get them all done.
Sal removed the stairs
before work on the back porch repair
began to give the contractors access to the porch. They were shoddily
built anyway. Which pretty much goes without saying. Y'know. Of course,
without those stairs, that made getting on and off the back porch...an
adventure. Prone as we are to accidents, I'm frankly surprised neither of
us broke or sprained anything, actually.
Anyway, we waited to
rebuild the stairs until after the house was painted because we wanted the
new porch skirting underneath to be painted to make sure it weathered
well. So after the house painters did their thing...and a few months
passed while we were distracted with other projects...we finally got
around to rebuilding the stairs. And by "we", I of course mean "Sal"
because that's the way these things go. (I would also point out that he's
become quite the skilled craftsman and you'll note the way he scribed the
steps where they met the house so they'd follow the profile. Awww...my
very own little woodworker.) The results are stairs that are now level
and, AND! they don't shift when you step on them. Because that
could've been, like, dangerous 'n stuff. Behold!
Once that was done, the
back porch was ready to be prepped and painted. Which we totally did right
away. Um, a month or so later. Timeliness? Not our strong suit. We
finished it just in time for the weather to cool down (yay
procrastination!), so we didn't actually get to enjoy our lovely and
totally awesome screened-in back porch during the summer heat. But next
year -- next year, there's no holding us back. And in the meantime,
I can troll craigslist for the perfect set of wicker chairs, maybe a small
side table or two.... With some cushions from Target, some rag rugs, and a
small footstool, our back porch will be the perfect place to read on an
unusually warm April Sunday, with the cats sunbathing nearby and maybe a
cup of tea to ward off the chill...wouldn't you agree?
With the prospect of the
autumn rainy season bearing down on us, and the fact that it'd been,
y'know, SIX MONTHS since the house itself was painted, we decided to
buckle down and tackled the last of the exterior painting -- the front
porch. Which first needed to have the large gaps between the porch fascia
and the front floorboards filled up somehow and about 90% of the nails
removed and replaced with deck screws. Yes, you read that right. Nails,
people...they used framing nails to fasten the porch floorboards down.
Framing nails, for the love of Mike. I mean, I'm obviously no
carpenter or anything, but even I know that you use PORCH SCREWS BECAUSE
NAILS WOULD INEVITABLY POP UP AND GIVE YOU TETANUS WHICH YOU WOULD TOTALLY
DESERVE IF YOU WERE THE ONE WHO PUT THEM THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE AND ALSO
THAT EXPLAINS WHY FIFTY BAJILLION OF THE NAILS IN OUR FRONT PORCH WERE
POPPING UP AND THREATENING TO KILL US DEAD WITH TETANUS EVERY TIME WE
STEPPED OUT OUR FRONT DOOR AND THE NAILS WEREN'T EVEN STAINLESS STEEL SO
THEY RUSTED ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE AND TELL ME AGAIN WHY YOU THOUGHT
NAILS WERE A GOOD IDEA BECAUSE I'M CONSIDERING REVOKING YOUR MEMBERSHIP IN
THE ANIMAL CATEGORY AND PUTTING YOU IN THE VEGETABLE CATEGORY.
Stupid people annoy me.
Well anyway, Sal spent two
days patiently prying up (STUPID! RUSTED!) nails and replacing them with
deck screws. At which point we also discovered that in some places, they'd
drilled holes for the nails, but they'd never actually, you know,
nailed anything. So our porch was only fastened by one or two nails in
some places. AAAAGGGGHHHH THE STUPID IT BURNS ME!
ANYWAY, Sal
finished all of that, as well as blowing out all the crevices with the air
compressor (they'd fastened the decking as if they were tongue-and-groove
floorboards, leaving no gaps between them, which means the crevices got
wedged with dead leaves and dirt and other detritus since decking isn't
the same as tongue-and-groove and is thus meant to be fastened with a
small gap between the boards so that stuff can fall through AND TELL ME
AGAIN WHY YOU'RE ALLOWED TO OBTAIN A DRIVERS' LICENSE IF YOU DON'T EVEN
KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DECKING AND TONGUE-AND-GROOVE FLOORBOARDS OMG???)
Whatever. Sal took care of
it because he's awesome that way, and in yet another display of his innate
awesomeness, he also filled in the quite largish gap between the porch
fascia and the front floor boards -- a gap of as much as an inch in
places) by filling it with carefully fitted scraps of wood and then
filling that with house bondo and then patiently sanding it all
nice and smooth so you don't even know there's anything there. Note to the
POs: THIS IS CALLED DOING THINGS PROPERLY WHICH I UNDERSTAND IS AN
ENTIRELY FOREIGN CONCEPT TO YOU BUT I ASSURE YOU IT'S ACTUALLY POSSIBLE
NOT TO DO THINGS HALF-ASSED.
While he was toiling away
on that stuff, I spent a Saturday fastidiously oiling down our porch swing
and our beautiful Adirondack rocking chair. The swing we bought at the
same home and garden show where we signed up for
the stars. The Adirondack
chair we bought this year for our anniversary; we'd been on the lookout
for one for months and we got an amazing deal on it, so of course we
snatched it up. It's made from eucalyptus, so it's a sustainable hardwood,
and it was made by a local craftsman (support your local businesses, woot!).
Oiled up, it has an amazing range of color and it's just stunning.
Finally -- finally! -- we
were ready to clean (blech), prime (double blech), paint (yay!), and touch
up (meh). And we brought out our cool welcome mat, and the very cool zinc
planters, and then we spent the next several Saturdays of glorious autumn
weather sitting on our front porch and reading and watching the world go
by and walking around in our bare feet on our front porch without getting
tetanus.
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