Porch Floor – DONE Part I

So, classic newbie blog move…I’ve failed to post for quite some time. Today my aim is to update you on the final steps of completing the porch floor (translation: hours and hours and hours of work).

I believe last time you heard about the porch is looked like this: 

Here is a messier picture of that day-remember those rusty nails, I’ll mention them later.

I was aghast that I’d cut that lovely wood back one joist too far. But I can hardly go back in time so I ordered lumber cut to the dimensions of the decking and another piece to replace the fascia in the front.

Handy-nerd-neighbor-man was nice enough to use his circular saw to cut off the rest of the decking off at that first joist in a nice neat square line. I don’t yet have this basic tool and I’m a little scared of it, but I’m sure I could get comfortable using it but my porch was NOT my ideal place to practice because if I messed up….I would cry.

I decided to remove the floorboards that I had cut shorter than desired and then use as much of the old growth wood from those boards to replace the ends of other boards.

Let’s pause to see everything in this picture.

1: My father-in-law who has EXTENSIVE construction history helped me replace that rotten front joist with this here modern pressure-treated board you can see in front.

2: You can see where the rotten end of the boards have been cut, they are white because I primed them as a rot prevention measure. Yay me.

3: See those pressure treated boards setting in front of of the primed ends of the floor boards? I screwed those boards to the existing boards to nail the replacement ends into. (That is terrible grammar isn’t it?)

4: See where I took out those full length boards? That was NO SMALL FEAT!!! They didn’t just pry out-not remotely. In fact, I had to sacrifice an entire board and cut down the middle of its length with a jig saw. However, to make things worse, at each joist I’d hit a sideways nail and break a blade (that reminds me I owe neighborman about 5-6 blades). I’m one of those people who realizes things when I say them, so I kinda talk a lot. And it was was exactly when I was telling handy-nerd-neighbor-man that there was some 19th century magic because there were hidden horizontal nails in the decking that I realized….they were blind-nailed! Ugh. They meant business when they put those in 120 years ago. Let’s all pause to remember the Handy-Nerd-Neighbor-Man’s bruises of October 2015 when he was helping me remove the long rusty nails that had held the decking into place.

That’s enough info about that picture.

Here is a picture of the new deck boards primed on 4 sides. Normally boards that are being installed should be primed on 6 sides but in this case the to-be-exposed sides didn’t need to be primed because my hard-core industrial oil-based enamel I’m using for the porch floor doesn’t require priming so those parts are left unprimed. Priming is annoying, it’s not all finished and pretty like finish painting and I’m using oil-based primer which is slow to apply and stinky.

I need to pause here to tell you about a silent raging controversy among those who, and I generalized here, aren’t big talkers. And that rarely debated controversy is………Nails or Screws?  I have spent quite some time on the internet trying to discover “the truth.” Up until this point in time I’ve used which ever was recommended by the on-line expert I was trying to emulate or, more frequently, the preference of the person who is helping me. All the information I found online was basically screws have more tensile strength and nails have more shear resistant strength. My father and father-in-law are Team Screw and John Leeke, historic preservationist, and Neighbor-Man are Team Nail. I have no official team alliances yet. I’ve sorta veered toward using screws for hidden work-like securing those pressure treated boards and using nails for finish work that will be seen like nailing down floor boards, to choose a totally random example. I’m pausing here to discuss this topic because I was intimidated by the prospect of blind-nailing the new boards in because if you pre-drill and/or have self-tapping screws and a good drill using screws requires almost no skill which is exactly the amount of nailing skill I had before this installation.

And I’m officially capable of learning. I blind-nailed the first 8 boards into place and of course sight-nailed that last one on the left because I’m not magic. Doesn’t the weather look great?

Then I had to move on to putting on those little end pieces.

This involved:

1: Realizing the floorboards were not as uniform width as I had assumed so I had to go to dad’s workplace to use the table saw to cut off a sliver of some of the boards to make them 2 1/8″ or 2″ width so I could line them up properly.

2: Spending all day nailing them in place which I was pretty good at by then.

3. Having EVERYBODY talk to me because I’m working on my front porch on a beautiful day. Apparently I’m impressive because I’m a lady AND I hammer things. Having this pointed out to me doesn’t anger me nor does it flatter me. Rather, it throws me off because I wasn’t quite aware of all my watchers until this point. Additionally, I consider myself a little post-feminist, I mean, realistically that day’s activities didn’t involve impressive strength for a woman but rather were merely stereotypically men’s activities which aren’t easier or more difficult than many stereotypical woman’s activities. If I didn’t want to do them, I wouldn’t. When a well-meaning 60 year old woman affirms my skills and how good it is to see a woman nailing boards I’m not sure what to say. Moving on.

4. And then…..after all my totally impressive competent work….I realize I didn’t remember to maintain the slope of the porch floor. I totally forgot when installing that front joist that that was a thing to consider. Frickity frick. Those replacement end boards slant up slightly basically meaning if I left them as-is there would be a little puddle-pool right at the location of the new butt joint whenever it rains.

To be continued……………