The House Chronicles: Repairing the Porch
Oct. 27th, 2024 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aThere was a period of time from May or June of last year (whenever it was that Lucy got sick) to just a few months ago where the going was pretty hard. After Kimberly and I took care of Lucy (and worried about her!) for six months, Kimberly injured herself and then fell ill, and then we dealt with that for several months more. I was still perfectly able to get my work done. I closed out _This is Free Trader Beowulf_ last year (and now it's in print!) and I must have finish about a book and a half of _Designers & Dragons Origins_ over that year and a half, plus of course I was doing technical writing a few days a week. But work + keeping the household running + our various problems took every single erg of energy.
Finally, things are looking better! Kimberly has dealt with what looks to have been a bout or two of tendonitis and she's now walking increasing amounts. We did almost two miles up in Kokee two weeks ago, then almost two miles in the Arboretum last week, then almost two miles out at Mahaulepu yesterday. So, we've finally been able to get back to more than just treading water, which means home improvement (actually, it's home improvement of the sort that may be treading water too, but it's great to be working on it).
Our first new task was to call our carpenter who put in our great cabinets and book shelves two years ago. We've had some things in our master bathroom falling apart (cabinets and a pocket door; thanks humidity!) and I also wanted him to take a look at our front steps, which never drained water right and which had been growing increasingly ragged and bad-looking over the years.
Our cabinets and our walk-in closet door are operating well again now (though we'll have to replace the former at some point as the crappy particle board continues to deteriorate in this wet environment). The front steps were going to take more work, though. Besides looking bad and besides not draining right, there was a lot of rot. Really, unsurprising given the other problems.
So our carpenter did rather extensive repairs. Our stairs originally had been full boards on each steps and then a riser behind them. Our carpenter said he didn't know why people had ever put risers on exterior stairs, as they stopped draining and also said the boards were really too big and tended to bend and warp as a result. So the risers got pulled and each step was divided into two pieces of wood, also allowing draining between them. He built it all up, primered everything, and we already had appropriate colored stain, so he stained it too, and it looked great afterward.
Of course, that made it obvious how bad the patio above our front steps and the trim around it looked. However, that was just wear and tear. Without the problems of rot and drainage this was something I could deal with (in theory). So in the last week I've been going at that, the first real home improvement in maybe two years. Restaining the whole deck has made it look great again, except for problems with bubbling. I think I caused some of that by power washing the deck and then starting in on painting six hours later or so, likely leaving it damp under. But I've discovered that there was obviously a lot of bubbling in the existing stain, it just wasn't obvious after years of use.
So I painted and scraped and repainted. I did the patio in sections because I was getting sore when I was doing it, especially on the first day. Most of the patio is pretty good now (though you can see where I scraped and restained, because there's a lot less layers on those areas, so I may actually need to put paint over everything to make it look its best). And there's still some bubbling from the last day's work. That was Friday afternoon after work. I just haven't had the oomph to go after it yet.
We also still need to paint the trim. We have a beautiful blue that we hope will be a nice replacement for the red-dirt red on there right now. Kimberly was going to help me have a go at that today (so she could do the careful work that I'm bad at), but the weather report was too threatening for me to want to put fresh paint out in the potential rain. So, soon.
Hopefully this will also help me get back to my old home improvement projects:
1. Scrape (very old) bubbling on lanai.
2. Restain back two-thirds of lanai (the part my dad and I didn't replace).
3. Put vinyl planks in my closet.
4. Put vinyl planks in the Harry Potter closet.
5. Think about redoing the floor upstairs.
(Whew.)
Finally, things are looking better! Kimberly has dealt with what looks to have been a bout or two of tendonitis and she's now walking increasing amounts. We did almost two miles up in Kokee two weeks ago, then almost two miles in the Arboretum last week, then almost two miles out at Mahaulepu yesterday. So, we've finally been able to get back to more than just treading water, which means home improvement (actually, it's home improvement of the sort that may be treading water too, but it's great to be working on it).
Our first new task was to call our carpenter who put in our great cabinets and book shelves two years ago. We've had some things in our master bathroom falling apart (cabinets and a pocket door; thanks humidity!) and I also wanted him to take a look at our front steps, which never drained water right and which had been growing increasingly ragged and bad-looking over the years.
Our cabinets and our walk-in closet door are operating well again now (though we'll have to replace the former at some point as the crappy particle board continues to deteriorate in this wet environment). The front steps were going to take more work, though. Besides looking bad and besides not draining right, there was a lot of rot. Really, unsurprising given the other problems.
So our carpenter did rather extensive repairs. Our stairs originally had been full boards on each steps and then a riser behind them. Our carpenter said he didn't know why people had ever put risers on exterior stairs, as they stopped draining and also said the boards were really too big and tended to bend and warp as a result. So the risers got pulled and each step was divided into two pieces of wood, also allowing draining between them. He built it all up, primered everything, and we already had appropriate colored stain, so he stained it too, and it looked great afterward.
Of course, that made it obvious how bad the patio above our front steps and the trim around it looked. However, that was just wear and tear. Without the problems of rot and drainage this was something I could deal with (in theory). So in the last week I've been going at that, the first real home improvement in maybe two years. Restaining the whole deck has made it look great again, except for problems with bubbling. I think I caused some of that by power washing the deck and then starting in on painting six hours later or so, likely leaving it damp under. But I've discovered that there was obviously a lot of bubbling in the existing stain, it just wasn't obvious after years of use.
So I painted and scraped and repainted. I did the patio in sections because I was getting sore when I was doing it, especially on the first day. Most of the patio is pretty good now (though you can see where I scraped and restained, because there's a lot less layers on those areas, so I may actually need to put paint over everything to make it look its best). And there's still some bubbling from the last day's work. That was Friday afternoon after work. I just haven't had the oomph to go after it yet.
We also still need to paint the trim. We have a beautiful blue that we hope will be a nice replacement for the red-dirt red on there right now. Kimberly was going to help me have a go at that today (so she could do the careful work that I'm bad at), but the weather report was too threatening for me to want to put fresh paint out in the potential rain. So, soon.
Hopefully this will also help me get back to my old home improvement projects:
1. Scrape (very old) bubbling on lanai.
2. Restain back two-thirds of lanai (the part my dad and I didn't replace).
3. Put vinyl planks in my closet.
4. Put vinyl planks in the Harry Potter closet.
5. Think about redoing the floor upstairs.
(Whew.)