Front Porch

  We have started on the front porch, here Albert is putting up the ledger board on which the floor joists will hang.

 Below photo shows the joists installed

 And then the step foundation.

 The porch floor boards are a new man made product called Azec.  It comes in several colors and will never need any maintenance or painting. We chose a similar mud brown to match the same paint as the back porch.

 Now up goes the roof.  We kept the same look as the original porch, but instead of just the one peak, we went for a hip roof.

 Below you can see the rafters framed up.

 End of the day shadows.

A Mistake

Yesterday I painted the porch what I thought was going to be a very nice rich, deep gray.  According to the chip, anyway.  As you can see, it did not turn out that way.  Looks like white, right?  To say the least, I could not get up to the paint store for a different color fast enough. 

Here is the completed paint job with the right color.  More of a brownish gray.  Color picking out is not my forte by a long shot!

We also are taking this time of good weather to improve the drainage on the east side of the root cellar. 

Albert had to dig the ditch deeper to install a drainage pipe at the proper level to flow out and down from the building.

We also had another load of pit run brought in on the south side entryway.  We will be putting on the porch on this side soon.

And just so you know, Mom says that these are porches, not decks. There was no such thing as decks back in the day.  Decks were on ships, not houses.

Deck On

Today we finished up the deck, next is the 3x8 cement pad going out from the last step.  It will also be necessary to have some sort of a railing/barrier on the west side wrapping around to the stairs.  Possibilities are a bench, planter boxes, or a 3-4 foot railing.  Landscaping will suffice for the near side as it is not quite so high as the west (far) side.

Here is a photo of the root cellar garden.  Lots of alliums  looking like round purple balls floating in the air.  The figs are ripening nicely on the fig tree to the right and the hummingbirds have been busy at the orange montbretia on the left.

Deck Begins

We have just about finished all the primer paint coat on the new sheet rock, so decided it was time to get back outside to begin work on the three deck/porches we will need to build.

We had saved all the yellow cedar decking that was on the east side of the house and now are going to install it here on the north side going out from the dining room.  Above photo is the joists and the still hanging original post where the really old porch was.

Here is the yellow cedar decking that needs to be cleaned up before installation.  There was an oil based stain on it originally.

So out come the power tools!  An electric planer did the trick of removing that old sticky stain without gumming up too badly.

Then the next step was to sand the groves out that the planer made and make it smooth.

Here it is partially installed and all clean.

Tomorrow we will begin on the wide and shallow steps. No railing will be necessary as the deck is not that far off the ground.  

 

Cluck, Cluck

Yep, we have chickens!  Thanks to cousin Patty we now have five beautiful laying hens destined for Pioneer House.  Albert built a nice and tidy chicken tractor for the hens that we have been keeping at our house.