After having been up for a good 15 years, the front porch to the house has finally degraded to the point that it was becoming dangerous to walk across. Boards were sagging in the middle due to the main support boards underneath having rotted away and crumbling under the weight of repeated foot traffic. I had to replace a couple of boards in the past but at that time the support/foundation boards were still intact enough to not need any attention. I also had to replace a couple of steps and side railings as well but now, its gone too far into a state of decay that it would not even make sense to try and replace the individual boards, just tear it down and rebuild the whole thing, bigger and better.
But first to tear things down, I would like to be able to salvage as much as possible, whether its the screws used to secure the boards together, or the brackets used to tie the boards together with the screws, or some of the wood itself. This meant taking time with the power tools to dismantle things a little at a time and stack things out of the way as the porch comes apart. I started dismantling the porch starting at the rails. I wanted to get the rail sections off first, then remove the brackets from the posts then finish off with the posts, stacking everything up separately. Separating the screws and the brackets, I then stacked the rail sections out of the way in a staging area. The posts were stacked up, possibly to be used to help in reinforcing the stairs since I would have to make a standalone staircase for the door after removing the porch. Next is the removal of the long 2x8 boards that make up the floor of the porch. Again, I wanted to save as much as possible so I can have some decent material to make my reinforced staircase. Even with some of the boards being in bad shape, I can still cut a short section from the 12ft long boards to make reinforcement braces for the staircase. The posts will serve as extra legs for building up the staircase. As I pulled the boards off the support boards came apart that much more, allowing me to remove the detritus from the area. I also started removing the support posts, 4x4's, from the area along with the concrete blocks used to support the posts and the porch as a whole. After doing a review of all of the posts, I separated the candidates from the pack that would be used to make my standalone staircase. At this point I started building my standalone staircase since I was far enough along in the dismantling of the porch that I would have to separate the stairs from the rest of the porch body. I went ahead and took some brackets salvaged from the porch itself, along with some screws, and measured and cut some posts to attach to the back of the staircase so they could support the unit properly. These posts allowed me to cut the back board which was an extension of the end support board to free the stairs from the rest of the end support board on the porch. With the staircase pretty much "made" I was able to finish the dismantling of the rest of the porch and the clearing of the rest of the materials from the area. Now there was a bit of a problem though. Because of erosion, the ground under the porch had worn away, leaving deep cavities that needed to be filled in prior to me even setting up my temporary staircase, much less before I set up the new porch. As can be noted in the previous picture, I had to fill in the cavities in the ground with some masonry blocks I had laying around along with a bag of concrete I had left over from sinking posts to the fence. This will be just the beginning as I will dig out extra dirt in spots to lay more blocks as well as a bunch of surplus bricks I have laying around to get the ground leveled as possible. This will at least allow me to get the staircase level and sturdy on the ground so it won't tip and move under our weight. Later on I plan on laying gravel down over all this area after getting it prepped up so it will blend in with the rest of the driveway and grounds where I'm laying gravel so I can set up the foundation blocks for the porch without having to do any extra building up to separate the driveway from the rest of the grounds under the porch. Also noted in the pic was the staircase. I added a couple more posts and brackets to the rear of the unit to add to the strength of the stairs. I ended up also using a couple of cuts from one of the floor boards to make braces for the sides and the rear of the staircase and the bottom of the posts to finish up the reinforcement of the overall staircase before setting it up against the house under the doorway. With the boards attached to the staircase along with the posts, the whole unit is pretty strong and able to withstand our weight and the heavy traffic that it will sustain during the time it will take for me to gather the materials we need to build the new porch. Even the bottom of the posts were secured to a board to add to the reinforcement. Another thing I had to do in the meantime since I had extra cavities in the ground leading up to the walkway was lay down the some of the boards that I removed from the porch. This was to cover up the cavities and other dangers on the ground from anyone tripping over them. I dug spots to lay more blocks down but because all the blocks and bricks I laid down were uneven, the boards help make things even and safe enough to walk on until I can get some gravel down. As stated before I will be laying down gravel over all of this area, pretty thick so I can blend all of the grounds together into one great area prior to starting construction of the new porch. I want all of this area covered equally so there will be no need to do any kind of decorative dividers or anything like trying to extend the lava rock garden under the new porch. This all will work out well and will allow me to eventually build up the ground under the house to prevent further erosion since the trenches and cavities extend to under the house and out the other side. These grounds will have to be built up all the way out to the chicken yard where the area around the back door will also have to be shored up and filled in to create a base with which to start the construction of the porch I plan on building for the chicken yard. It won't be as big as the porch for the front door but it will be sufficient enough that multiple people will be able to stand on it without being crammed together. Until then, the front door area is set up and ready for use.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2023
|