Some of you that have been following along may recall WAY back when I corrected/rebuilt the mess that was the back wall/rear entry of the Old Vic (here).

We ended up installing some French Doors that came with the house (we have 17 extra doors left, none of which fit the one place in the house that’s missing one).

Along with a substantial bit of repair to the structure we went from this:

To this:

Problem was, despite stripping and refinishing these doors with quality exterior oil-primer and paint, along with another coat within a couple years, they simply could not hold up to the weather.

They are literally falling apart.

Since you may be aware, when it comes to Old House things…that everything is connected, you’ll probably understand that it became absolutely critical that I replace these doors immediately after I completed the roof, which started me down the portal of porch railing hell…front AND rear…

Anyway, I already did the doors once…I hate doing things a second time…and I’m determined there will not be a third.

So…we did what we should have done in the first place…we ordered Serious Door to fit this space.

It came in this week…along with some of my replacement columns for the front porch…so…this, my friends, is what’s known as a “Truck-load of work”.

So, yep. Serious Door is Serious.

Serious Door is manufactured from only three materials:
1) The finest unobtanium available.
2) Hypercompressed $100 bills.
3) The core material of a neutron star (gives them their weight).

Made in Texas. Took twelve weeks. I pawned Rhode Island to pay the bill (just slightly under the GNP of a small nation).

Serious door is serious. Iron door. Iron frame. All welded construction. Fluted E-rated glass. Ball-bearing hinges, Etc etc etc.

When installed, this entryway may just take my truck’s nickname of “Big Iron”…as I think they weigh just about as much…and I’m sure they are worth more…

Serious Door is not black…it is an oiled-bronze/copper color. Supposed to be a lifetime maintenance free finish.

Serious Door, of course, has an all welded, heavy steel door frame.

Welded Pin and barrel hinges.

Ever seen a residential entry door with zerk fittings?

Initial impression on picking up Serious Door from the lumber yard was that for something of that weight and cost, it was not particularly well wrapped.

I told the guys I was concerned about dings/damage but didn’t want to unwrap it to inspect before transport. They indicated that it wouldn’t be a problem, but if I found damage it would be taken care of.

Having spent the better part of two hours de-packaging it, I’ve revised my estimate to “moderately well wrapped.”

I also decided that other than the glass…it could have been not wrapped at all and been just fine.

You don’t damage Serious Door…Serious Door damages you.

I’m guessing the doors weigh in at about 250 pounds each…and another couple hundred for the frame…and I’m not exaggerating when I say they are worth more than the truck that brought them here.

Installation on these will begin…well…I don’t know. I’m in the throes of the front porch project…but the French doors have surrendered as French doors are want to do…and this will enforce a deadline to deploy Serious Door.

Oh, and speaking of front porch…

I got the trim installed on the bottom of the box beam, and the entire thing leveled up. The numbers are dead-on…all the way across to the curved section (a separate project). I am now ready to install the first two columns and the under-pinning.

So, of course, I was missing some critical pieces.

More later!

Oh, and ps: Sorry Rhode Island, I’ve no intention of getting you out of pawn…tough break!

Why yes, you CAN get more done without killing yourself when the temperatures are milder.

We had gorgeous weather for, well, pretty much anything this weekend. So I, of course, worked on the porch.

Turns out…other than completely reframing the entire friggen porch…the hardest thing about putting down the “stuff” isn’t actually the putting down of the “stuff”…rather…it’s the staining of the stuff…

All six sides, including the tongue and groove sides, need to be stained before installation.

For the straight section of the porch only…that’s roughly 450 linear feet (or 75, 6 foot pieces) of 3” coverage tongue and groove…stained front, back, tongue, and groove.

The stuff can be a bear to fit…tapping things into place and making sure everything is properly aligned…but with the cooler temperatures (and not needing a water and air-conditioning break every 96 seconds) we made great progress!

The entire straight section is completed!

I’ve high hopes I’ll never have to mess with this (other than a top coat of stain every now and then) ever again.

Next I have to trim out the box-beam and install the columns.

It’s the details on this house that are gonna kill me…

This is the trim that goes on the bottom of the box beam on the front porch…the columns support this.

Because of the cost of this particular wood, and the location of it…it has to be primed and painted on both sides before installation in order to last past the next generation.

If I just “put it up” and painted it afterward…it would probably be good for my lifetime perhaps…but I keep doing it “right”.

But “right” is what really slows things down. A coat of primer and two top-coats, each with two hours between coats and it’s gotta be flipped too…means an all day paint job. And then 48 hours before it’s ‘hard’. All this means I didn’t even come close to installing these this weekend.

That’s a detail. And there are a LOT of details on this house.

Ah well…they’re ready for next weekend I suppose.

These are high-white by the way…columns and some of the trim on this house will all be high-white…but like any good Victorian…none of the rest of it will be…

Once these are in, and the columns are in (which ALSO need primed and painted before installation!) I can get my jack-posts back and tear out the NEXT section of porch…the curve.

Or maybe I’ll put up a railing or two first…after-all…that IS why I started this entire project…

And let’s not forget the under-pinning…winter is coming.

It’s a process…..

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Getting the porch deck down was on the agenda for this weekend. It didn’t get finished.

The deck is 4″ tongue and groove (actually covers 3″ swath). Old house folks are often strangely snobbish about materials to use…you’ll hear something like, “They only used planks ripped from the heartwood of virgin forest blue mamba tree. The entire tree must be sacrificed to get a single plank, and it can only be harvested on the blue moon of an even numbered year by nubile virgin females of the endangered vwaliki tribe.”

They will also often go on to tell you that you are destroying your house unless you throw the maximum amount of money possible at each project, and will soundly chastise you for struggling to save the structure on your budget so you have a home (hint: It’s not a museum).

The estimated cost of the material some of these folks recommend eclipses the GNP of a small nation.

Truth is, lumber quality has fallen some over the years…and the price has certainly gone up…but despite this, the Victorians were still stingy where they could be, using cheaper materials where they could.

The original tongue and groove porches on this house were yellow pine…and they are again. We are putting down yellow pine, but with a twist…it is treated, and then kiln dried after treatment (KDAT). This duplicates the look/style of the original porch decking, without totally destroying the bank (it costs just slightly less then the GNP of a small nation). It also provides hope that this deck will outlast me…and perhaps…the age of the original. My objective (and hope) when I do these projects is that I won’t have to redo it again…ever.

So behold…the decking going down!

I didn’t get much further than this. The heat and humidity this weekend were horrendous…both numbers flirting with the century mark…we set record highs…and record high *lows*!

I am also very much slowed by the necessity to stain all 4 sides of this stuff before putting it down (which was NOT done on the original floor).This should make it last even longer.

The heat was the real killer though. Sunday I got the saws/etc out, measured and cut a few boards, put them down, stained a new batch, and then found myself shaking and weak. Decided I must be getting old and put everything up and took the rest of the day off.

Turns out it was 100 degrees and extremely humid. WAY too hot to be working on that stuff. Ugh.

It IS looking good though.

On another note: This nailer is the best $100 spent ever!

I’ve put down/up tongue and groove beadboard with a finish nailer…shooting the nails in the proper place/angle through the tongue…it’s…for lack of a better term…a bitch. This thing is heavy and awkward to get in place, but once get the board in place, and the nailer in place, a whack on the trigger with a mallet (provided with the nailer) and BANG! The nail is in, properly, and it’s not coming out…probably ever.

The nailer shoots these nasty looking things…

Supposed to be cooler next weekend. I hope I’ll make more progress.

The goal this weekend was ambitious…and as usual…the result was mixed. I’m happy with what I got done, but hoped to get a little further.

Due to the heat and humidity, it’s vital to get started early. Shorty the Corgi…otherwise known as “Not Morning” dog was less than enthusiastic.

First on the agenda was the removal of a large, yet superfluous gas pipe. At one point the gas system in this house had been split in two and an additional meter installed so that one side could be a rental. Eventually, the system was joined back together and the additional meter removed. That left a large pipe protruding out the front of the house and then entering the ground that was simply valved off at that point. Although there was nothing unsafe about the way it was, this pipe had no function at all and was in the way of a needed pier for the front porch, so I needed to remove it (seen in the pic below)

Difficulty…threaded togther black-iron pipe…no unions…so it would have to be cut, then unscrewed from the fitting where I wanted to insert a plug. Even with the gas cut off, I really didn’t want to cut the pipe with a sawzall or such as I might ignite the remnants remaining in the pipe. Again, black iron so no “real” danger, but I’d put as #1 on my list for the day, “Don’t Explode”.

A pipe cutter was required. I picked up a cheap one since I don’t expect to use something that size very often. While it is not the quality of tool I’d want to try to earn a living with, it was perfectly suited for this cut, and no doubt will serve for any other large cuts I need in the future.

Screw spin…screw spin…screw spin…and the cut was made. Easy peasy. Crawled under the house to the first “T” and attacked it with Mike’s two-foot pipe wrench. Again, easy. Slathered the 1-1/4″ black iron plug with pipe dope and screwed it in. Gas back on, test, and we’re done!

And we didn’t even explode.

The rest of the weekend, between birthday dinners for my Mom, other food breaks, and lots and lots of water breaks was spent horking (that’s a technical term) very large lumber, cinder blocks and pads, a half-ton of concrete, and a slew of power tools around.

Before we knew it, the 20ish foot straight section of the porch was framed up. Yeah, I was lazy and didn’t move the plywood for a pic…it’s just there for me to walk/sit on while I finished up the screws/nails, and will also assist on moving around while I put down the flooring.

The little corner brace…was not technically necessary…but since everything else on this frame job was high into the “overkill” mode, this was added as a 10″ in diameter column sits there, and the corner thingy will take any weight not sitting on the rest of the beams so as to not buckle the flooring.

Another view…

Seven new piers, about 1000 pounds of lumber, notches into the original framing on the house, $30 bucks worth of deck screws, a dozen clips of framing nails, and we have our framing.

You could park a truck on this thing. Please don’t. It’s perfectly level for it’s length, and has a 1-1/4″ deliberate slope away from the house to let any wind-blown precipitation that manages to get under the roof to run off instead of puddle.

Yes, it’s nailed AND screwed. I like power tools WEEEEEEEE! (I also NEVER want to have to rebuild this again).

A big shout-out to my friend Mike for the help!

Flooring should go down next weekend…I will tackle the curved section of the porch as a separate project…I need to get the columns/etc back in the straight section so I can use my jack posts on the curved section (vs. buying a few hundred dollars MORE worth).

Oh, and in case I’ve not mentioned it here before…these guys ROCK! Better lumber than the big-box stores, good pricing, they get me what I need, and they deliver it if needed. If you’re local, stop in and tell Paul Allen I sent ya!

More next week!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

I didn’t get as far on the framing as I would have liked this weekend…with Mike’s help I got the front beam for the porch built, the piers set and filled with concrete…and the old bodarc pilings removed.

The heat caught up with me at that point…although I didn’t realize it had gotten that hot the heat index had gone to 109.

First, we pulled the old bodarc piers.

Bodarc (also called Osage Orange, Post Oak, or Horseapple trees around these parts) is a very hard wood that is practically impervious to bugs and rot. It was used as pilings for raised building construction all over the south from the 1800’s to about 1960.

Most of these were still in good condition but one was slightly hollow and the termites were using it as an elevator to attack the porch lumber.

I could have reused them, I will add a termite barrier (essentially cap them with a piece of flashing) to any I work on under the house, but I needed to move them around for better framing and structural support for the porch so I figured I’d just replace them.

Here’s one shown for size. This weighs in at about 200 pounds. Bodarc is flat out heavy. Not in bad condition for 115+ years in the ground. It is still solid as a rock. It’s difficult to drive a deck screw into this wood.

Next we built a beam to go across the 20ish foot front section of the porch. This will hold all the column weight.

Next we positioned the piers and filled them with concrete. Yes, I know in this pic the middle one looks off-level. It is not. That’s a frame of reference thing with the gas pipe and the temporary pier.

No, I don’t have to go down six feet here (or even one).

Some of the framing under the Old Vic…the porch mess not withstanding, this is some gorgeous work. 115+ years old and not a split, sag, sign of rot, etc…

All my structural issues will be around the edges…particularly the front/porch thing…as the box gutters (which are long gone) they liked to use in this era were…to put it mildly…problematic.

Oh, and a trip to the dump with a truckload full of rotten wood netted me…a new door!

“Ya never know when ya might need one” seems to be a common affliction of the old house owner…This house came with about 12 extra doors…and none of them fit in the ONE spot where I’m actually missing a door…

But I couldn’t let it lie…it’s not rotten, (just dirty) no significant dings, no splits or cracks, and it even has the hardware on it. When I finally figure out what doors I DON’T need…I’ll clean ’em up and put ’em up for sale. They tend to fetch a reasonable sum.

The “big-ass beam” is now in place and perfectly level (as well as plumb with the porch header) so the framing *should* go faster next week. With any luck, we’ll get some flooring down! (not sure, we’ve got to stain it on all sides before application!)

More next week!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

This weekend we got the second segment of porch header installed, and started to work on the porch deck and structure. The first part of the project is the 20′ straight (as in not deliberately curved…”straight” would be a hard word to apply to anything that was there) section. We will address the curved sections of porch in a separate project.

In theory it would go something like this…
Step one: Remove all the rot.
Step two: Repair what’s left.

There wasn’t much left after step one.

The intermediate supports…20′ 2×8’s. the notched one was originally sitting on two posts, but one of the posts had fallen out, and it was no longer supported on either end.

The other beam was attached at both ends, but had NO support in the entire 20′ section.

No wonder this porch was a bit…bouncy.

I will reuse these for intermediate supports for the porch deck, but will add additional blocking.

The front beam (that the columns rested on) had been cribbed on a couple times but was basically completely rotted.

This was actually pretty easy to get apart, I needed nothing more than a hammer and a Stanley Wonderbar.

The front beam or porch sill, will be three 2×8’s bolted together and run the length of the straight section, and also under the 1st column at the edge of the curved section. Additional blockage/support will be added.

I will also add one more intermediate support. The old ones were on 2′ centers…which is just a little wide for tongue and groove flooring, although it worked for many years in this case.

The flooring we are using is a 3″ tongue and groove like what was originally here, except it has been treated for rot and bugs, and then kiln dried. Nice stuff. Not cheap.

I *MAY* actually have it far enough apart. Tune in next week…when (hopefully) I get to start putting stuff back together!

So, last weekend I built and installed the first replacement box beam holding up my front porch.

This weekend I started on the next segment. This required a couple more jack posts and some fiddling around to get the weight safely off the entire 20 foot section of porch. I chose to do the entire section as when I get the upper structure repaired, then I move on to the lower structure and column replacement and that will be easier to do in one “batch” for the straight section.

I will tackle the curved section separately.

Currently the weight is completely off the first three columns.

This damage is due to the bane of many of this era house…box gutters. That’s a gutter that was inserted into the roof so it wasn’t visible. They fail, or leak, or overflow and the water goes into the eaves/structure. This damage is directly under where the box gutters used to be in this house.

Some repair was done in the past…namely there are a couple bad rafters that have been repaired, but the work on the box beams was just of the “cover it up” variety.

The box gutters have been removed and roofed over on our home, so this will never be an issue again.

There is no weight left on this, all is held safely by the jack-posts.

It’s starting to come together. First beam segment is square and attached to the rafters and the edge beam of the porch. It has pulled the rafters/roof line back into line nicely and with minimal effort.

The new beam is ready to install. That’s next weekend’s project, as well as starting on the porch floor replacement.

The thermometer indicated 104 degrees at this point…and despite frequent breaks, some shade, and plenty of water I’d had enough fun for the day.

Y’all might recall that Saturday, I built a box beam for the front porch header…and prepped it for install…all the while managing not to kill anybody or destroy anything (major).

We installed it Sunday! The first segment is a success! Multiple careful measurements, a careful build, trimming, and calculations meant we only had to hork it up there twice. Ugh. Thanks to my friend Mike for the assist!

Fits perfectly and it’s much stronger than the original, allowing me to pull everything back into line and get it straight. Everything is pulling together very nicely. I’m very pleased.

Next week, I’ll do the next segment…which in the pic above appears not to line up, but that’s due to the fact it’s not actually attached to the rafters…rather…it’s just sitting on top of the column. I expect when I uncover it to find significant deterioration. I do believe I need to pick up a couple more jack poles though.

After segment two is built and installed, then I go to work on porch structure and deck…and then column replacement…and after that…I’ll get to start on the porch railings…which was the start of this whole project.

That box beam is a pretty thing…it’ll seem almost a shame to cover it up.

Oh, and nobody died (AND we can use the house again) so we consider the weekend a rousing success!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

So, in my epic quest to actually GET STARTED on the front railings…I’ve begun to tackle the structural issues on the front porch. I want this stuff to be straight when I add railings.

Here’s what I’m up against…the porch header is a box-beam that’s suffered damage over its lifetime and been poorly repaired. You can see its minor case of “wompy-jawed-ness” (that’s a technical term). No way I can just add braces or repair rot and call it good/straight.

I’m basically jacking up the roof, cutting out the box beam (it’ll actually probably mostly fall out), building a new box beam, and installing it. I’m doing this in sections (once column set at a time) for manageability and so I don’t have to buy a couple thousand bucks worth of jack-posts.

That’s 10 feet, center to center on the columns.

I didn’t want to remove all the old stuff till I had the new ready to go back in, so that the least time possible is spent with the jack-posts being the only support. Just being cautious.

The beam, minus it’s coverings, is 15″ tall by 5-1/2″ wide. I figured it would be easiest to replicate that size so I don’t have to replace or modify the curved section to match it when I get there.

I built a new box-beam…this is for the first 10 foot section. I wanted something a little beefier, without getting carried away since what was there actually held for 100 years or so. “Beefier” helps me pull everything back into line and get it all straight.

I hope to insert this beam tomorrow. Then I’ll do the next 10 foot section.

The curved beam actually looks pretty solid…I’ll know more when I get to it…but it is over 4″ down in the center and will take some work to get it all leveled back up. That will for sure test its “okay-ness”.

A preview:

So far I’ve not broken anything, killed anybody, or found anything I can’t handle.

…but there’s always tomorrow!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Y’all may recall the massive roof project we did earlier this year. Since, of course, no good deed goes unpunished, when we notified our insurance company that we’d installed a new roof their response was something like, “Meh. Install porch railings or we cancel you.”

Our back deck definitely needed railings, and I tackled that here.

The front porch is annoying though…we intended to do something “Victoriany” there…someday…probably when I replaced the porch decking…but Texas building code doesn’t require a railing there (the porch is 30 inches). There is also a historic railing and this is not something we wanted to tackle now but the response was simply, “Mr. Meyer, we don’t care about the historic value or the building codes. You’ve two choices here. 1) Install railings or 2) Forgo insurance.”

Always nice when petty bureaucrats get to tell you what to do…not due to rules or whatnot…but simply because they can.

Gad.

Anyway, we finished the deck railings, and now it’s time for the front porch.

Just bang some railings together, right?

Heh…not so fast. I *could* do that to satisfy the insurance company…some aluminum cheap crappy something or other wire-tied to the columns…but I don’t want to do things twice so the job needs to be done right.

That means:
Step one of the front railing project…
1) Rebuild columns.
Step one of the column project…
1) Rebuild the porch.
Step one of the porch project…
1) Rebuild porch header.

Can of worms = Open.

It’s important, especially when adding lots of new vertical and horizontal elements (the new railings) to the house, that everything be straight.

Since we have a couple columns that are damaged at the bottom or sunken into the porch deck, we need to start with getting those right, as well as leveling the porch header and deck.

I spent some time this weekend just doing preliminary stuff…checking the structure…playing with the jackposts to see if they were up to the job (they are), and uncovering stuff to see what kind of lumber I need to pick up.

First, get the weight off the columns:

Lots of measuring and running about with a level and I found the “set point”…the spot I need to level everything else up to.

There is a lot of old damage here…and it was never really a solid header to begin with, so I will completely rebuild the porch header…with an actual header.

I want this straight and level.

We knew the porch deck was shot…and already found a wolmanized tongue and groove to replace it in the original style. The question was how much of the porch structural lumber we would need to replace.

Not too bad…mainly the outer beam.

So…next weekend I’ll start with some lumber and a big box of screws and do some structural rehab. A new header will be up first. I expect in this heat…that will take a day.

Then I’ll tackle the deck structure. I have to do both before I can fit a new column.

I will end up doing this one section at a time (column to column). The real bear’s gonna be the curved sections!