New Front Porch

We love our house, but the builder did some stupid things when building it. For instance, the porch posts and railings were made with interior wood and not really prepped or painted for outside. The posts were glued, finger-jointed wood, and that just doesn't stand-up outside. We have lived here since 2001 and most neighbors have replaced their porches. We finally refurbished the front porch and now it looks real nice.

The rails rotted away years ago, so our porch just had the deteriorating posts for years. We wanted to make it look like it did originally, with fancy posts and the railing again. We bought vinyl posts and rails this time, so they will be pretty-much maintenance-free and last forever.

For the last two years, I have worked six days a week, and am pretty-involved in church on Sundays. So in other words, have no time to do any 'projects' around the house. I asked my neighbor across the street, if I could hire him to do this porch project. He said that I could not hire and pay him to do it, but would gladly do it. He said he would get some other neighbors to help, and that is exactly what happened. I was able to help put some railings up with him on one night, but other than that, our wonderful neighbors demolished the old porch posts and installed the new posts and railings.

We have great neighbors, and not for just doing this for us. The have always been willing to serve the neighborhood. So a big THANK YOU goes out to all of you!

Here are some pictures of the project.

Before. Note just posts, the railing disappeared long ago.

One of the rotting posts. You can see clear through it!

Oh yeah, besides the posts and rails, the cement for the porch was poured in the winter and when it dried, it shrank and cracked. Do you think the builder would do anything about it? Of course not.

Here are all the vinyl pieces in the garage. Also in the picture is one of the Adirondack chairs we bought last fall when Home Depot was trying to get rid of them. (Read: cheap!) We bought four, and stored them for the winter, then in the spring Heidi painted each one, and then put them together.

We had the cement cracks ground out and filled with patching cement.

One of the cracks being fixed.

Nice that the porch cracked all around the rim... NOT!

My neighbors taking down the old posts and propping up the porch with some 4x4 wood posts.

Hauling off one of the old posts.

This is 'Handy Andy' as Heidi calls him. He headed up the project and did most of the work.

One of the new posts installed. The trim collar that goes around the bottom of the post is lifted up so the post can be anchored to the cement.

Another post installed.

Working on the far corner post.

Taking out another old post.

Installing one of the middle posts by the front door.

A lot of the work took two or more people.

The old post graveyard.

The rails installed along the sides of the porch.

Most of the posts are now installed.

In between the Saturday's that they could work on the porch, we would put the porch furniture back in place. That is a bench we have had for years that Heidi put a new coat of paint on this spring.

Of course the cat, Cortez had to inspect the job.

Cortez still inspecting.

This half is done.

Here is how it looks from the front yard.

And the other half getting installed.

So all that the old posts are good for is firewood! So I cut it all up and put it in my wood pile.

Now the other half is done.

A closer look.

Done! A front view of the new porch.

Side view of most of the porch.

Her is is all decorated for Fourth of July.

Another shot of the decorations for the holiday.

And one more Fourth of July view, just for fun.

We still have to do some minor work where the tops of the posts are installed, and install the trim collars on the bottoms. Also, since the cement cracks are fixed, this fall we are getting an overlay of cement put on the porch to cover all the cracks and the repairs.

Thanks again to our neighbors for the service, it is much-appreciated!