An Ounce of Prevention

Untreated wood and years of rain, snow and irrigation don’t mix well.  The once-beautiful wrap-around front porch of the House has finally succumbed to that bad combination.  The floor joists of the porch set directly on the ground and were rotting away, affecting the floor boards and the ornate posts.  If you’ve been around recently, you know how rickety and unsafe walking on it felt.  The deterioration of the porch was also causing the porch roof to sink, with  a strong possibility of falling off completely with the weight of a heavy snow.  To preserve the distinctive look of the porch, preventative measures had to be taken.

Floor boards and floor joists were removed; but the circular frame of the rounded corner was saved to provide a template to rebuild it.

Decorative posts were removed and replaced with 4x4s and deck blocks, allowing the porch roof to be jacked up to level.  It had sunk over 3 inches!  A few of the posts survived, but some broke into pieces as soon as the roof pressure was removed.  We’ll be on the look-out for architectural salvage posts for our rebuild–if you know of any, let us know!

The roof has continued to leak–causing damage inside–so additional tar was placed on the roof to (hopefully!) weather-proof it for the winter.

Bill and Donna want to send out another big thank-you to Ryan, their niece’s husband.  The porch will survive thanks to his knowledge and hard work.  We welcome help from the community as we continue to winterize and as we continue renovation in the spring.  If you’d like to donate a bit of your time, muscles, and/or expertise, let us know!  🙂