Seventy-Seven -TEEEE-Seven-In-eches

I have an odd quirk when doing something that makes me really nervous. It used to happen when I would go up on high ladders but I’ve kind of gotten used to that now. When I was up on the ladder working I would get a phrase in my head and repeat it over and over again. Eventually the words would morph a bit and start to sound different. Sometimes the accent would move to a different syllable, or other times the last syllable from one word and the first syllable from the next word would break off and form a new word, thus rendering three words that now made no sense. If I continued long enough the whole phrase would become unrecognizable as English. I haven’t done that in a long time but it happened today.

I decided I needed to fix the front porch before I painted it. I’m renting the boom-lift on Wednesday to paint the attic gables so I have a few days where I have nothing to do. Instead of doing nothing I decided to fix the porch. It is an inset “L” porch and the one corner away from the house had serious rot. The fir decking had rotted to the point where the post had pushed down in to it. Fortunately they used redwood planking as a sub-floor, but that wasn’t doing much better. That whole outside corner and the front had serious dry-rot and really needed to be rebuilt.

The tricky part was, I had to jack to porch roof off the porch an inch or so to take the weight off that corner. Of course, I have to put the jack on the porch deck. It’s kind of like if you had a jack on the kitchen table to hold the roof up, and then you had to replace the legs of the table while the jack is still on the table holding up the roof.

I had to start by going under the porch and build new supports that were set back from the outside edge of the porch. Then I jacked the roof up. Like I said, I only had to lift it an inch or so but it was very nerve wracking because the whole thing is now being supported by the new supports I built and the jack. The first board I needed to cut was 77-inches long. It took a few hours to get enough wood under the porch so that I could let the jack down.

Maybe I’m a bit of a pessimist at times, but the worst case scenario kept going through my head. I kept envisioning the jack, with it’s long board on top holding the roof up, jack-knifing away as I watch the whole porch slowly peel away from the house and end up in a pile in the front yard. I was very nervous. For about an hour I kept repeating “77-inches” over and over again. That first board I cut was 77-inches long. It went through many variations but settled on “Seventy-Seven -TEEEE-Seven-In-eches”. It’s a wonder I didn’t all the boards 77-inches long.

As it turned out the porch did not peel away from the house. I have all the primary supports under the porch replaced that needed to be replaced. I got new sub-floor and decking on the spot just under the post, and the roof was jacked back down on top of everything. Whew! Tomorrow I need to replace more decking and sub-floor on about 25% of the porch. Everything I’m using to rebuild it with came from the 2-story addition. They built the first floor kitchen of the addition on top of an old porch so there was a bunch of fir decking under the floor that was in great condition.

The stairs are kind of in rough shape but they are safe. I think I’ll leave that for another project. The only other thing to do is new skirting around the porch. I have a very cool idea for the skirting that I stole from someplace. It’s pretty simple but may not explain well in writing. If all goes well I may start it Thursday.

Grass growning on the porch is never good


About the half-way point. Still a mix of old and new wood


Close-up. You can see the black, bottle jack on the left with the board on top of it holding the roof up. The post is still floating in air at this point. Seventy-Seven -TEEEE-Seven-In-eches