Daily Home Renovation Tips

Editor’s Note: We have asked, begged, pestered and finally received the story about the recent porch renovation from a friend of ours, Rebecca.  In Part 1, Rebecca had encountered 3 ice dams and subsequent water leaks during the winter, causing sufficient motivation to attach the problem head on. Today, her adventures continue. If you would like to share your home renovation experience with us, please feel free to drop us a line. 

At the first sign of spring, we called Alvin.

To be accurate, actually, we called a couple of small contractors… getting multiple quotes is a “necessary evil” but one of those experiences we prefer not to think about now that it’s over. Especially the afternoon that was wasted in listening to the fast-talker with three cell phones talk about his misspent youth, instead of about our porch renovation…  We got lucky with Alvin: an honest man, and a true craftsman with the crowbar and nail gun.

And as soon as the old porch interior panelling began to hit the dumpster, it became clear that we were lucky in more ways than one.

Carpenter ants in the exterior framing were the least of the unpleasant surprises — and at least they were still confined to the far corner of the outside wall, not yet settled in to eat the house itself. A shop vac and a good pair of stompin’ boots were enough to take care of the ants.

No, it was the roof itself — the same one that my sturdy partner had been standing on, along with several feet of snow and ice, that day in mid-winter. In fact, the whole porch-and-mudroom structure was on the verge of collapse.

The original 100-year-old roof rafters were sistered together from irregular pieces, some not even resting on the top of the framed wall, and others taking the weight on a single nail. And they were spaced a full 34 inches apart!

The sheathing (rough cut barn boards of verying thicknesses) was rotten and ’spongy’.

And even the “modern” work — done sometime in the late 1960s, as near as our elderly neighbours can recall — was an amateur hack-job, done without regard for whatever building codes might have existed in rural communities in that day.

The double windows, making an opening in the wall almost five feet in width, had no header at all. Look closely at the picture and you’ll see a collection of random wooden blocks and a lot of air space, basically no support for the roof at all along the greater part of that outside wall.

No wonder our poor old roof had failed and leaked! (ED: And, one has to wonder about the air tightness in that part of Rebecca’s home from an energy conservation perspective).

Return tomorrow when we complete the renovation of Rebecca’s porch. To access the last article in this short series, simply select this link to Part 3.

Editor’s Note: Rebecca Leaman writes on nonprofit technology and web 2.0 for the Wild Apricot Blog, administers the Central Beekeepers Alliance website, and doubles as ‘Jen / domestika’ at Domestik Goddess and the Authority Blogger forum.