Section One Begun

I was doing a little thinking today and it dawned on my that, you know what, this is a lot of house to paint. Has anyone else noticed that? When you stop and think about it, it’s really a lot of damn house to paint. I mean a lot of house. Really a lot. A lot. A lot. A lot. A lot. A lot. A lot.

It’s a lot. Really, really a lot

A lot.

But, I’ve just gotta keep chipping away at it. Or, I guess I should say scraping away at it. That’s what I’ve been doing today. Scraping shingles on the second floor of Section One (Refer to your charts). It’s going pretty good, I guess. It sure is a lot of work, though. Has anyone else noticed that? This is a lot of damn work. I mean a lot a lot. Not just a little a lot, but a lot a lot. It’s just keeps going and going and going and going. I swear to God I think those octagon shingles are multiplying before my eyes. They just go on and on and on and on. It’s just an ocean of octagon shingles. There’s a lot of them. A lot. A LOT!

{ok, calm down….calmblueocean calmblueocean calmblueocean}

The goal is still to try and finish Sections One & Two by the end of the month. I had hoped to start on it Monday, but that didn’t happen. Then it was going to be Tuesday, but, oops, it didn’t happen then either. Wednesday was looking really good until I discovered I needed to jack up the porch roof a measly inch. This is something that’s been gnawing away at me ever since I “finished” the porch.

The reason for the jacking is because the porch roof was not high enough and the gutters might now drain properly. You might be thinking that it’s a very small porch so how bad could it be. If you were thinking that, you’d be wrong. The porch is small but there is a downspout from the main roof that drains on to the porch. That downspout drains close to 25% of the main roof.

I waited on the gutters until I finished painting the front because I knew I was going to be dragging ladders on to the porch roof. Now that I’m finished with that it’s time for new gutters around the porch. The thing that was gnawing at became overwhelming as I was flipping through the yellow pages looking for gutter people. Was the roof too low? I got a level and climbed up on a ladder and found out it was.

The outside column that needed all the work had serious rot at the bottom. When I had the roof jacked up and was rebuilding everything I was so nervous that everything would come crashing down that I really didn’t pay enough attention to some things. What I should have done was measured the other column and jacked up the rotted one to about the same height before I put new supports under it. I also could have checked for level the ledge that the rain gutter hangs on. I did neither and so that outside corner of the porch was too low.

It wasn’t something I noticed when I looked at it, but in pictures I could notice that it was off. I thought at first that it was supposed to be like that so the gutters would work right. There is a gutter that runs along the front, which then turns a corner and runs along the side. The downspout is at the back of the side piece. The problem is, both the front and the side slope towards that outside corner with the column, not towards the downspout. The short side run should either be level or slope towards the downspout.

There is a good chance that even if I did nothing the gutter would fill up with water to a point that it would drain anyway with out over flowing. I might end up with some water sitting in there but I’m not sure it that’s terrible. If it does overflow though, it will overflow right at the corner that I had all the rot. If it had been a longer run of gutter it probably wouldn’t matter. As it is, it’s a total of about 18 feet of gutter that drains 25% of the roof. It’s going to get a lot of water. By bringing it up an inch I made the side level so now there should be no problems.

Jacking it up sort of solved other problems and created new ones. The little brackets at the corner of the posts had little gaps were they met the posts. When I initially jacked up the roof I thought this would bring them in to alignment with the columns, but it didn’t. This should have been an indication I didn’t jack it up enough. Again, I wasn’t thinking things through all the way. When I jacked it up yesterday it very nearly brought them in to the proper alignment with the post. However, the new soffit I put on, that was as tight as a you-know-what on her you-know-what suddenly had a big nasty gap in the corner. Bummer. The gap was a good 3/8-inch but I had more of that urethane caulk which did a nice job of filling it.

The other problem was the new porch rails. They now sort of went up at an odd angle. I had to get out the trusty Sawzall and cut through the nails so I could lower them a hair and reattach them. I also had to redo the trim around the base of the column because it was now and inch off the porch deck. When all the caulk drys I’ll need to go around and touch up the paint job. It was a pain in the ass, but not a major pain. I’m really feel good about fixing it because it is something that has been bothering me for weeks.

Now, I can call the gutter people with confidence and say, “Gutter people, do my gutters!”

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