Porches

For many people, the porch is an integral part of the character of a house. Whether its just a little awning over a stoop or the wrap-around porch of a manor house, the homes just wouldn't be the same without them. Unfortunately, porches take a great deal of abuse from the weather, especially moisture. Decking and framing rot is a common problem on many of our clients porches. Rot takes place in wood that gets wet and stays wet, allowing the normal already present microbes to decompose the wood in the same was that it would decompose on the forest floor. Make no mistake, wood is designed to rot, and rot quickly under the right circumstances. On another occasion, we'll discuss the reasons we use wood as a building material (rather than steel or stone) despite its tendency to rot.

But for now, we'll deal with the problem of rotting wooden porches. Because a porch is always outside, it is exposed to a great deal of moisture, which is not in an of itself a problem. What creates a problem is when the wood is continually moist or wet and doesn't have a chance to dry out. This condition mimics the conditions of a tree on the forest floor--giving microbes the chance to begin digesting the wood and you get rot. To mitigate this, you've got two options: try to keep the wood dry or use wood that will not rot (Pressure Treated wood). In the project below, we had to use both methods. The client wanted to maintain the original shape of the porch as well as restore the turned cedar posts. Much of the framing was rotten. A fair amount had to be replaced and all of the decking needed to be replaced.

You can see in the above picture that we've replaced some of the framing with pressure treated 4x6's and 2x6's. The intact framing, which happened to be Hemlock, we covered with a bituthene product called Grace Deck Protector. This puts a waterproof membrane between the decking and the framing, theoretically preventing the water from sticking around long enough for rot to occur.


Many homes in Maine have a bulkhead door to the cellar, but this home had the cellar access built right into the porch as you can see above. We were able to recreate the existing door built right into the porch decking. When the door is closed you can only see the tops of the hinges sticking up.

Another challenging aspect of this restoration was the deterioration of the existing cedar post feet. Instead of replacing the whole post with a newer, pressure treated post, the client wanted to keep them and use a scarf joint to replace just the rotten part. So we cut the posts 24 inches above the decking and used tongue and fork scarf joints to add new pressure treated post feet. We secured the joints with 4 3/4" oak pegs and two beefy screws (and bunged the holes with the same pegs). After priming, the new foot is still visible, but certainly not an eyesore. To prevent future deterioration, we installed a boot of lead flashing around the bottom four inches of the each post.

When it was all finished, it looked like this photo above.

Another recent porch restoration is pictured below. This one involved some new framing, new roof sheathing, new roofing and new siding above the porch roof.


When the project is finished, most of the ginger bread house trim will be restored to its original glory.

Trim from Reclaimed Lumber

While some of our clients like us to come in to complete a whole project all at once, others like to pick away at little projects on their property's buildings over time. In this case, some good friends of ours, who are also clients, have a large barn with a studio, gallery and residence above, a farmhouse and an above garage apartment all on several acres. An estate like that always has some small project going on, so if we get slow one week or need to fill in a few days, we pop over and take care of the next thing on the list.

The last several things on the list have been: turning old v-match pine into paint-grade trim stock and then building window and door casings out of it. The v-match came from last year's remodel of the gallery.

Here is a photo of the gallery during remodeling. Much of the old gallery was covered in very campy 1x8 v-match pine. With all that ripped out, we now had all kinds of stock to make trim out of, but it ALL has to be denailed, sorted, ripped down to size and then sanded or planed to make it ready for paint. When all that is done it looks something like this:

Windows in the farmhouse laundry room with new custom extension jambs and casings.



The main thing to keep in mind when using old pine for painted trim is to use a spot primer such as Zinsser's BIN or Kilz to make sure the knots don't pop through the finish paint. Or just forget the paint and let wood be wood; it has character.


Closeup of reclaimed pine casing and sill.


Door casing of reclaimed pine.

This is the same front door in the first photo, now installed, painted and trimmed out.


Stay tuned, next post will be about a porch restoration (or two).

Wide board pine flooring

One popular option for wood flooring is just using #2 wide (1x10 or 1x12) board pine as your finish floor. I have recently installed two pine floors in cahoots with my cohorts at Sustainable Structures. One was in an upstairs bedroom (a low traffic location) and one was in a kitchen (a high traffic location), both in the same house. There are many who would not recommend putting a soft wood like pine (specifically Eastern White Pine, Pinus Strobus) down in a high traffic area. It is admittedly very scrape, scratch and dent prone (think dropped kitchen utensils etc), but with a hard finish it can be an viable option. The other positive aspect about pine flooring for many people is its low price. In some instances, unfinished 1x12 pine can be purchased for less than a dollar per square foot, then add installation and sanding/finishing (at a dollar per foot each) and you have a nice looking real wood floor at $3.00/foot. But remember it won't be like hardwood in any way.






















Mark, enjoying some sun while making new cabinet parts.





















Troy and Pete installing a rosin paper underlayment around the brick woodstove base.






















Unfinished pine flooring, installed.






















Unfinished Pine flooring face nailed with hand cut square nails.

Shed Conversion

Greetings from coastal Maine. So far its been a nice winter in my opinion, a little cold, a bit of snow, some wind and a short January thaw. A snowy February and early March would just make it all dandy. Well, a bit more activity in the home improvement and remodeling sector would help too, but I'm not complaining.

Lately we've been keeping relatively busy with insulation retrofit and weatherization work in cahoots with Sustainable Structures, but there's always time in the schedule for small jobs that make a big difference for the client. That's what this little job was all about. One of my snow-removal clients asked me if I could convert about 1/3 of a 14'x20' uninsulated shed into an insulated workspace. They also specified that the job would be on a tight budget and finished in phases. It seems like everyone is on a tight budget these days, but many homes still need work.

To get achieve the client's desired outcome, we proposed building a stud wall with an exterior grade pre-hung metal door to divide the space, then insulating the floor (with 1" foil-faced polystyrene foamboard), the walls (with R-11 Kraft-faced fiberglass) and the ceiling (with R19 Kraft-face fiberglass). Over the floor insulation we recommended installing a layer of 7/16" OSB to protect the foamboard and to create a nailing surface for a finish floor in the future. Normally I would recommend a blown-in cellulose or a polyurethane foam insulation, but since price was a concern, we went with fiber-glass as it is the least expensive option available. For the cold side of the new partition wall, we recommended installing some kind of wall covering, to protect the fiberglass insulation, to stop airflow through the insulation, and to add security to the space.

On building day, we arrived earlier than our materials delivery and started by prepping the space. We added blocking in the middle of the existing shed walls to create a nailing surface for the existing shiplap sheathing/siding, some of which had buckled because it was only nailed at the top and the bottom. The materials arrived from NC Hunt Lumber mid morning and we got to work building the wall and the insulated floor. By midday it was pouring rain (in mid January!) and we moved all our cutting operations inside. After getting the wall up, hanging the door and insulating, we found we overestimated on materials and had a whole sheet of foamboard and a whole roll of fiberglass left (good news for the client, a savings of $50).


















New insulated partition wall in 14'x20' shed.





















Interior of insulated workspace. In a future phase of construction, we will install some type of wall covering, either drywall, paneling or boarding, and maybe even a window.

























Metal exterior door installed and air-sealed around the rough opening.





















Cold-side of new partition wall with OSB installed. Ready for use.

In the future, the client would like some kind of wall covering installed in the space (drywall, paneling, or boarding) and possibly a window installed.

Upcoming projects include some more porch restoration work and installing a wide-pine-board floor in a Dresden farmhouse

---CGW---