Category: porch

Upstairs Door

The door to upstairs has always been a bit rickety. I decided to, instead of buying a new one, try to fix it.

But first, I had to make a new door threshold. I had an old piece of red oak that I decided to cut up and custom make it.

This piece of wood had been under the floor in the ‘scary room’ many years ago. It felt very solid and heavy, but had quite a few holes and blemishes.

Here are the pieces after shaping but before I glued it all together.

Glued, shaped, sanded.

I fitted it before doing the final sanding and finishing.

Mole made me sandwiches while I was working!

This door has many problems, quite apart from the severe weathering. It looks like it got broken into at one point (!), and is held together with nails and white caulk.

More clamps = better! Felt like the door was getting reconstructive surgery.

Now the massively time consuming part. There are so many nooks and crannies on this door, sanding was a seriously labor intensive activity. I also had to fill a lot of areas, and made a new piece of trim to match where part of the door panel had been broken.

Many (seven!) months later, I finally got round to finishing the sanding. For all that time, I had a temporary door in. There’s nobody living in that unit, so the door isn’t in use anyway.

It was so satisfying to finally get stain on this door.

Here it is finished.

Getting the landing back

I remember well the day we tore apart the old landing – ripping up work I’ve already done and finished feels so futile. Well, we finally got the tile back on.

First I had to get the landing waterproofed. I used Kerdi membrane – same as for showers. The part that’s a bit difficult to deal with is the transition at the edge.

Mole got back into her tile-cutting and helped to cut the tile while I was laying it out.

As the sun set, all tile was in place. Actually, this took a couple of days…

The whole deck is sloped towards the stairs, to try to get it to drain properly. Laying the tile in the warped areas is quite difficult.

Cutting pieces to fit edges and corners is where all the time comes.

Sorry, no visitors. Still needs grout.

OK, I think Arwen’s inspection was approved. Landing tiled!

June Rain

The highly labor-intensive work continued on the front porch. The weather has been sunny and warm, but there’s a weather forecast of rain…

Mole primed all surfaces of the balusters before I put them in.

Ever since I changed the wiring for the porch light, the marks left by the previous electrical conduit were an eyesore on the ceiling of the landing. You can’t see it clearly from the photo, but it also looked as if someone had started stripping the paint, but never finished.

So I put plastic over the door and landing, put the ladder on the landing, and did some overhead paint stripping. Really tiring on the shoulders.

Sorry, not photos after the stripping, but here it is with primer on. I’ve started to sand and prep the beautiful decorative wood posts. At some point, a really thick coat of paint was put on that did not adhere. In lots of places, it’s come loose, so there are voids under the paint. Other areas, the paint is showing cracking, as if the paint underneath is shrinking. It’s got to get ugly before it gets pretty.

Well, even though I didn’t believe it on this beautiful sunny weekend, I’ve been caught before: With rain forecast, I had to get primer onto all the exposed wood. Here you can see the new railing and balusters installed.

The rain did come. The following week rained almost every day. On the weekend, Justin came to visit. The cats loooovvve him.

We bought this electric fireplace back in December because my mum thought the downstairs living room was dingy. Our plan was to install it into the bookshelf space to make the room a bit more cozy. I took out some of the bottom shelves, and installed a new receptacle inside the alcove. But we’ve liked the heater so much upstairs that we never got round to bringing it back down. A rainy summer weekend is the perfect time.

Above right: Arwen and Bella inspect the test fitting.

Above left: Bella asks which screwdriver to use. Above right: I think Arwen just really likes getting into bags. She’s really curious and doesn’t scare easily; she hung around even after I started sawing, and got sawdust in her fur.

I had to trim off some of the top of the fireplace to get it to fit. But now it’s built-in.