House Exterior Summer 2017

This is a post to just mention some of the exterior work that I will need to tackle soon.

Over the winter or spring, I noticed that my electrical pole had come loose from the top, where it's anchored to the house. The reason: the two top plastic brackets had broken. Easy fix, but it took me about a month to pick up the supplies and actually get it done. I replaced all 4 brackets with new ones, and I did that yesterday.

In the photo below, the blue arrows show the brackets I replaced. The red arrow is another clip that had been torn out. The clip was still attached to the wire, so I only had to change the screw.



I should note that even though this was only about a 20-30min job, this was TERRIFYING for me to do, because it involved being up about 15 feet on a crappy and rickety ladder. I don't deal well with heights.

The entire top of the pole was curved away from the house. I thought I had taken a "before" photo. I looked everywhere for it, and apparently I didn't take one.



There are still a whole bunch of other small issues on the outside of the house that will eventually need attention.

There's still the hole in the fascia from the squirrels (which is blocked-up with metal mesh wire). Then there are the old grooves/tracks/brackets from previous electrical hookups. I'd love to remove all this and patch the siding. I have all the siding that was on the porch that I could use here. Currently these tracks are letting in some water into the porch. I still have the hole in the ceiling tongue and groove inside the porch. All the porch windows are also badly in need of restoration. Lots of the putty is flaking out and they need paint.



I have an oak sapling growing under the porch as well. Probably due to a squirrel, since the large oak tree is about a block away. I've sprayed it with Round-Up (poison) but it will need another application. I also still badly need to redo the porch bottom. I'm getting rid of the lattice and installing panels.



A while back I had a piece of metal fascia flashing that tore off this corner of the house. I also have a few torn-off roof shingles.



Then there are the garage/shop doors. I've hated the olive garage door since BEFORE I owned the house. It's hideous. I had planned to install folding doors, but I may just keep this door. Either way I want to paint this either white or light grey like the porch base. I also need to fix the trim around the 2 doors.



Two problems here. For some unknown reason, my exterior plug isn't working anymore. I have no idea why, but it will need to be fixed. Then there is the window. This is not high on my list, but the wood frame around the cement (that holds in the window) is pretty badly rotted. There is always water splashing on this window (it's always dirty).



On the other window, I noticed that the chip-board (installed by a previous owner) is starting to rot and flake apart. It might be nice to close this off with brick or cement, or even metal flashing rather than wood. I was also told a few years ago that the black PVC pipes for the furnace are no longer up to code. They now need to be the white PVC, since apparently there's a chemical in the off-gassing that causes the black pipes to deteriorate.

The Great Big Porch Reveal! Finally!

Well, several months' worth of work has come to an end for the year. I won't even pretend like there isn't still a TON of work left to do on the porch, but the part that shows the most is done, and it looks pretty again.

Here's a photo from back in May 2012, as a starting point.



And this is how it looks NOW!



Getting up to this point was no easy task. It involved many steps, including some demo, rebuilding the door jamb, replacing the exterior wood t-g, lots of puttying/silicone/gap-filling, and tons of painting.

The last few updates that I made on the porch were several months back, and included the removal of the old aluminum siding, and the beginning of replacing the t-g. You can visit those posts here:

New Mattress & Last Week's Work on the Porch - May 26th
Ongoing Porch Repairs - August 7th
Porch Restoration Progress - Aug 11th
Porch Door Rehab - August 18th
Porch Progress Thus Far - August 19th
Porch Painted (First Coat) - August 26th
Porch Door - September 3rd
Porch Door Update & Misc. - September 8th
Painting - October 8th

Alright, assuming you're all caught-up, here's where I last left you guys hanging.

I had been itching to scrap this atrocious (and damaged) aluminum screen door ever since I bought the house. Taking it off, and tearing out all the ugly 2x4s and other scrap wood blocks from the original opening was a great moment for me in this reno.





The door only stayed there for a few hours. I know someone took it for the metal, but I really didn't want to deal with it (having to take it across town to the scrappers). I was happy to see it go.

In the process (removing the door and added wood), I discovered that the original porch door was hinged on the interior, and opened on the opposite side (which makes a HELL of a lot more sense. I had noticed the hinge notches (holes) before, but I wasn't sure if they were added later, or from a second door. But there was only ever one door.

The problem with the door jamb, however, was that it was damaged, as well as coated in thick flaking oil paint (bright yellow). So I decided to start fresh and build a new door jamb the same as the original.



I also decided to replace the door casings, since I did not want them notched around the window sills (as they were originally - even though it looked kind of stupid this way).



I thought about changing the style of the casing, or dressing it up a little bit, but in the end, I decided to keep it very close to the original, which is very very plain.

Once I had my jamb in place, I hung and fitted the door frame, which had been completely reglued and reassembled (and partially sanded).



At this point, I painted the first coat, since I was getting tired of dealing with the plastic tarps/weather.





It was at this point where I had dropped the can of shellac sealer all over the steps/floor and all over myself (see "Porch Painted (First Coat)" above).





Before I did the second coat, I bought and installed the bottom trim moulding. This was not the moulding I originally planned to use, but the one I wanted was too wide, and the boards along the front edge of the porch are uneven. This would have looked really bad with the wider moulding.

It was a tedious pain in the rear end to hand-fill each and every little triangular opening in the t-g without making a mess/blobs.





Once the silicone (acrylic paintable DAP) was dry, I gave the mouldings a quick seal and first coat before painting a second coat over the entire porch.







You might notice that I did not yet add the top mouldings yet. This is because I'm planning to completely replace all the sills next year.

A lot of prep (not shown) was done on the porch before painting, including some gap-filling along the crown moulding, under the fascia edge, and in a ton of nail holes and the occasional small knot.



Fitting the mortise lock took quite a while, since I used a traditional brace (old crank-style drill) and chisels. Probably a few hours' worth of work by itself. The lock/handle/knobs are a salvaged set (ie: FREE!)



Although fitting a strike plate might seem like a difficult job, this was actually REALLY easy (for me), and I got amazingly nice results (nice crisp outline). All I did was face-screw the plate to the wood, score the wood around the perimeter with a blade. Then I removed it, and used a router with a flat bottom 1/4" cutter and nibbled away just close to the score line. A few quick passes with a chisel, and BAM! Done! Two more less fancily cut holes were made with the same router bit for the latch and bolt. The line you see in the photo is a pencil line. And NO the Robertson screws were NOT reused. Slot head screws all the way!



Getting there...



The house numbers were re-installed after the second coat was fully dry.

Quick side note: The entire porch (2 coats) were done entirely by 3" paintbrush. I did not use a roller anywhere. Same with the door.

I covered some of the window-making process in a previous post. See: "Porch Door Update & Misc.".



I added a moulded frame for the window, as well as a drip-edge at the bottom made from the same moulding. I used clear pine for this. DO NOT USE FINGER-JOINT WOOD OUTSIDE. I have seen this done before, and even if it's well painted, it will NOT last. All the joints will come apart from the moisture/temperature. Use good stuff for exterior work.

The reason for the frame is that I was imitating the look of a door with a removable window insert. The interior side of the door is made to look like a panel (see detail photos farther down).



Making sure the insert fit nicely.



After routing the frame (one side with a detail, the other with a groove for the glass), installing the glass, puttying, and drying, came the painting phase. 4 coats per side. I had tried to cheat and skip the primer, and the cedar bled through the first coat, so basically I did white topcoat (fail), BIN shellac sealer (one heavy coat + touch-ups), then 2 coats topcoat porch paint.

It was getting cool in the unheated garage, so the door got painted on my dining room table.





Put the hardware back on (my favourite part), and install!









Here you can see how the inside of the door looks. The window is sunk-in slightly, and it has a bead around the edge that matches the one around the lower panels. I still have the entire porch interior to do, including the door casings.





Note: I used the same mouldings everywhere. The door's stop moulding on the jamb is the same as the one used around the window, and for the drip edge.



TOTAL APPROXIMATE COST:

I thought I would give a rough estimate of what I spent on this reno.

Bin Sealer: 2 small cans at ~18$each
24' pine moulding: 24.50$
5 lengths pine moulding: 26.30$
1x5x6 pine (2): 19.30
5/4x6x8 cedar (2): 19.20$
Paint (2): 40$each (still have 3/4 of a can)
Shims: 3.50$
Nails: 4.00$
Pine 1/4 round (3): 21$ (did not use but I'll need it for the interior next year)
Pine t-g 6' lengths (27): 83.43$
Pine t-g + additional 3: 9.27$
Pine 2x4x8 (2): 5.30$
Cedar 2x6x8: 11.98$
Pine 1x4x8 (4): 22.96$
Pine 1x4x6: 4.30$
Hinges (2): 2.58$
Putty: 6.98$
Dap Acrylic silicone (let's guess 3 tubes): 6.50$
Glass: 14$

Free items:
- Old cedar door
- Lock, knobs, backplates, and screws
- 4 upper panes of old glass

I think that's about all of it, which gives a rough total of: 401.10 plus taxes gives around 450$.

NEXT YEAR:

- Replace bottom frames/lattice
- Replace stairs/railing
- Replace sills
- Rehab windows
- Interior door casings
- Paint interior floor
- Paint interior porch
- Front door (probably)
- Fix ceiling hole

To give you an idea of how bad the bottom looks, here are a few detail shots:







Alright that's it for now. I'm too tired to re-read and edit this so if there are any glaring mistakes of things that seem confusing, please tell me and I'll fix them.

Porch Progress Thus Far

Alright, I've been promising update photos for a while, so here's about 20, as current as yesterday.

As I showed in a previous post about the porch, I started replacing all the old tongue and groove boards around the porch's lower wall. Most of it was rotted on the bottom, and it was practically falling off since the nails holding it in place were nearly rusted through. Add to that the several layers of failing paint, and then it's just not worth stripping and saving it.

I had half of it done earlier, and the second half, I think last weekend...



In the process, I had to remove part of the railing, which was very poorly attached, and I also removed part of the door casing.

I also started working a little bit on the inside of the porch. I probably won't do much work on the interior this year, but I might get some of the trim and woodwork done.

I started by removing the old 1/4 round along the floor, since it was in bad shape. I also want to replace the cove along the top of the "base wall" since some of the corners are screwed up, and it's also not in very good shape. Other than this, I have one length to replace at the ceiling, and one or two boards in the ceiling to redo (from rot caused by a roof leak).

While working on the door frame, I'm going to replace and possibly improve/dress-up the door casings, so I removed those as well.





Another thing I want to change is this:





On the inside and outside of the porch, the sill goes into the door casing, and the casing is cut to notch around it. I've always thought this looked bad (since day 1), and I will modify it.

Here are a few details of the botched screen door install/patch job around the door. You can barely see the original door jamb under the various bits of added wood, and depending on the condition, I might have to remake it entirely.





The door is so badly installed and crooked that the house numbers look lopsided.



COMPLETE DOOR REPAIR/REBUILD

Alright, the following set of photos are the work that I did on the old cedar door so far. This is a rather extensive/involved repair, but it's a repair that I did with very limited tools. All I used for this was a router with a 5/8 square rabbet cutting bit (one with blades on the bottom edges as well as the sides), a table saw, clamps, and a chisel. I also used a speed square as a fence to route a nice straight cut on the ends). A planer is also nice to have for your patches, but you can work around this by using stock (thinner) material, or ripping-down your wood to fit.

NOTE: Some of the photos *suck*. The garage has really crappy lighting, and I was not going to get my tripod just for this.

I started by deciding how deep I should route-out my patches, so that I didn't remove too much material, but deep enough to add a lot of strength in the final product. I opted for 3/8" depth on each side.



I then cut a piece of cedar to rough size, and sawed though it on both sides. My saw has a small blade, so I had to finish the cut with a hand saw.





The two pieces were then run through a planer to nearly the exact depth (to minimize sanding later), and glued in place.

As I mentioned two posts ago, I used a special moisture cured, expanding urethane glue from work. This stuff is not available to the general public (it comes in huge barrels), but you can use an exterior wood glue, or alternatively, we also have a glue by Kleiberit. The one we use is hard to find, and it comes in a caulking gun tube, and it's a similar foaming/expanding moisture-cured urethane. I think it's similar to this one: http://kleiberit.com/en/products/adhesive-groups/kleiberit-pur-adhesives.html

One of the pros of this foaming urethane is that it has really good gap-filling properties (so it will actually work it's way into small cracks and crevices), and it's water proof and heat resistant. It will glue almost anything together, including metals, plastics, etc. The advantage, here, is that you don't always need to scrape-away all of the old glue if you're repairing something like an old chair.

Basically, this door will rot before it ever falls apart again.

The one big drawback is that it's very messy, you MUST use gloves, and it's almost impossible to wash off if you DO smear it somewhere. The cured foam is also hard to remove, since it's rubbery, and won't scrape off. We usually use a VERY sharp chisel, to cut away most of it, or it can be sanded down/planed.

Joints are usually misted or dampened with water prior to gluing. You don't NEED to moisten the joints, but it bonds better, and cures faster. It goes on in the consistency of honey (with a similar clear brownish orange), and it dries to look like beige expanding foam with a similar texture after it's fully cured.



Here, I've sanded down the patch on both sides, and then ripped-down the piece to rebuild the entire outside edge of the door (partially to patch the two existing holes, but also because of damage and rot along this edge.



New strip of cedar from an 8 foot "2x6"



Entire door reassembled, and checked for square.





Clamps removed and the door has been surface sanded on this side (using a belt sander).



It's FAR from perfect, but it should look alright once it's painted. I'll be using latex silicone along the panel edges and corners.



Patch:



I squared the bottom edge (which wasn't too bad), but the top will need a lot trimmed off. Nearly 3/4". The door had previously been trimmed, but it should still fit my opening, even with this much trimmed off.



That's it for now!