Porch Column Bases DONE!!!, that is, 8: Before and After.

I want to try to do a before and after post, which I haven't attempted yet, in this baby blog of mine. So bear with me if it seems too long and boring. I'll try to rely on photos only, but I have to hunt them up. This is the last in in the series. For the whole story and detailed info, see posts 1-7 titled Porch Column Bases. The first in the series is here. The latest in the series is here. They're all tagged with the label "Replace Porch Column Base Series," which you can find along the right-hand side of the main blog page. So here goes ...

Two before shots of the whole porch:

Then some close-ups of the four middle column bases we replaced.

Column Two Before:

Column Two After:















Column Three Before:

















Column Three After:

Column Four Before:

















Column Four After:

And Column Five Before -- the worst one:

Column Five After, hard to believe:

And last, a few after shots of the whole porch:

And very last, all lit up for the holidays!

Porch Column Bases 7: Finishing Touches

The last steps remaining to be done were the final caulking, filling and painting of the four columns whose bases we replaced, all described in the first six posts titled "Porch Column Bases." The previous post is here.

Before I tackled the final touches, I photographed a bit of damage that happened to the tops, either when we removed the bases and left the columns hanging, or when we repositioned the columns on the new bases.

I don't know exactly what happened, but when we went to put the new bases in place, and line up the columns, there were slight differences in positioning. I don't know if our eyes don't see the same straight line, or some of the columns were out of plumb before, or are now, or what, but when we lined up the columns on the new bases, there were slight shifts of emphasis, and cracks developed in the tops of the bases, where they attach to the porch roof beam. I photographed these and then just painted them shut. Will have to keep an eye on them for any additional shifting.

I mention it, because I think this is another area where we were lucky. The tops were as secure as the bottoms, and never detached while we were working on the bottoms. But I would suggest you check that, as you're taking off the bottoms. We just kind of took it for granted and got lucky that all the tops stayed in place.

Another thing that developed was a crack in the paint on the beam that runs the length of the porch (you can see it faintly here, right above the porch column capital). This beam is spliced. Again, we're lucky everything held together and again, I'd suggest you try to determine whether the beam is spliced or at least keep an eye out for it, when you're pulling everything apart.

In any case, a day or two after we nailed everything down, I went around and made sure all the nails and screws were countersunk enough, and then filled all the shimmed up gaps and countersunk nail heads and screws  with wood putty. In this case I used a pre-mixed, fluffy putty that was easy to apply sideways, and stayed put when I pressed it into the shimmed gaps. I'd had enough of epoxy oozing out of gaps, and also didn't see the need to use epoxy for this job. I hope I was right about that decision, long-term.

After the putty dried, I sanded it lightly, vacuumed everything up and then caulked the columns where they meet the bases and the bases where they meet the porch floor. 

Here are some close-ups and some longer views of the whole ball of wax after puttying and caulking:

Then I taped off the bases and started painting. That part went blessedly fast. Fall was well advanced at this point, the days were getting short, the day was one of those soft grey, pretty fall days, and I was glad to have an easy outdoor job for once, and even more glad to be done by nightfall.

To see before and after shots, the next and final post in this series is here.

Porch Column Bases 6: Just how crucial is it to secure those bases to the porch?

A big thank you to all my readers who have been so patient during this prolonged absence. We had a crazy Hurricane Sandy end to our summer season. And though we didn't know it at the time, we finished the porch column project just in time, quite literally. Another few days, and the hurricane would have blown through while our columns were unsecured, perhaps blowing the roof off the porch and who knows what else.  

Who knows? All I know is that we finished the project mere days before the worst hurricane on the east coast in decades. The worst of the hurricane passed us by, and we were fortunate, very fortunate. I was sobered and saddened to see the damage our metro-area neighbors sustained.

To anyone reading this who is working on a porch or planning a porch column job, I would give some unsolicited advice. Keep an eye on the weather forecasts for especially windy weather or storms. It never occurred to me until we were in the middle of the hurricane, how lucky we were that everything was nailed down tight. When we had the porch held up by jacks, I only worried about the porch roof falling down, not about it getting levered up and off by wind. I feel very grateful that I didn't learn that lesson by experience.

In any case, enough on that. It's been months, but let's pick up where we left off. The last post is here.  Capel had the bright idea of shimming the uneven spaces between the old columns and new bases with shims made from our cedar siding. This was a perfect solution, and here are some shots of him hammering the shims in place. 

He'd sawed and chiseled the large slats of siding into shims narrow enough to do the job and then sat/kneeled there with an enormous selection of shims, finding the right one to fit each spot, all around every column:

You can also see, here, just below, how we secured the square bases to the porch floor with a countersunk screw in each corner. I bought special Rockler countersink drill bits for this, and it was a breeze. At first we thought we'd sink only two screws in each base, ever mindful of how hard it was to detach the originals. But then I thought to myself that backing out a screw is super easy, compared to getting nails out, and that we don't want the columns sliding around or tearing loose, and so we put four in each. Boy was I glad we'd gone with four when the Hurricane blew through the next week!

In any case, this was the first column and base we put together, that had the worst gap. In places Capel had to put two shims in one on top the other, to fill the gap:

Then, when he was satisfied that everything was solid, he went around the perimeter with a chisel and cut each shim to size. There is another photo of that below, but first here is a photo of the column just above, now with its shims trimmed:

You can also see, in close up, how we nailed the column to the base, nailing through the column at an angle down into the base with 2" (or maybe even 2.5") headless nails. This was how they were originally fastened to the bases, and after a lot of thought about other ways to do it, we stuck with the original fastening method, in part, because the columns are made up of 9 vertical slats that are only held together with these nails at the top and bottom from the column shaft into the base and capital (as far as we can tell, anyway).

But getting those nails in at an angle was a huge bear. The columns are two layers of very hard cedar and to nail at that angle, we had to use nail sets. Capel made starter holes with a cordless dremel and drill bit (a regular drill couldn't fit up against the column tight enough to get the right angle), but those nails still had to be hammered in by hand with a nail set, every single blow knocking the nail set off the head of the nail, so you'd get a tiny bit of drive and then have to reposition the nail set. 

Not a very pretty job -- I'm showing you the bad and the ugly, here a bent nail that couldn't be pulled or driven further, and so got hammered up into the column. But it is what it is. As one of my bosses sometimes says: Done is done. And this one is DONE!

Here's another, showing Capel chiseling down the shims to size, after they've been well and solidly hammered into place:

And the result. In this case, the column needed much less shimming.

And, finally, the end of another long day of work, every column reattached to its new base, every base secured to the floor.

Quitting time! 

It was Capel's birthday, and in honor of the end of our second summer's work on the house, I snatched up a fortuitious haunted house cake at Carvel's for a thematic birthday celebration:

And gave him a scary mask to hand out candy in. 

Next year maybe we'll decorate the porch for Halloween. It would make a great haunted house porch.

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Addendum, spring 2013: The entire story with instructions for replacing bases is tagged with the label "Replace Porch Column Base Series," which you will find along the right-hand side of the main Life at Pugsley blog page.  Or, you can go to the next in the series, on finishing touches, here.