Progress on the Porch

I never quite  know what to call the structure that we are building.  In Florida, it would be a "lanai."  Here in Wisconsin, it really is a screened-in patio slab.  I call it a "porch" for convenience, but in reality, a porch has a wooden floor and a shingled roof.  Ah well, whatever it is that we are building, the work continues even as it tries to kill us.

Why the fatalistic viewpoint?  Well, we work each day in pain (Rick has more pain than do I), and we work past our limits to the point of exhaustion.  Add in the heat, sunburn, and a constant threat of dehydration no matter how much we try to drink, and you start to get the picture.

We have worked nine to ten hour days for the last few days just trying to get the porch finished.  We leave on Sunday again for a week at Mayo as Rick undergoes more tests and tolerates some diagnostic injections. We hope that they will be able to discover what kind of physical therapy he can use to alleviate his Piriformis / sciatica pain.  He also will find out soon if he needs back surgery.  Before we leave, we both desperately want to put on the roof.

To get to that point, since my last blog, we have done the following steps on the porch:

We completed the cross braces on the roof frame.

We added fascia boards to the rafter tails
from the house to build a frame for the soffits.

We used treated lumber to frame in the north wall
of the porch.

We replaced rotting 2x4s with a 4x4 treated post to frame in
the opening for the door.  Then we completed the frame of the
east-facing wall.  We also took all of the timber that we tore out
to the city landfill.

Yesterday we spent the day framing in the soffits.
Today, Rick added the final bracing brackets to support
the roof we will try to install tomorrow.

The new roof structure has braces every 24 inches which should better
support the heavy snow loads we seem to be getting each winter.

And each day as we build, I move my bean plants and
my cherry tomato plant out of the way so they continue
to grow.  I can almost taste the fresh veggies already!

While the porch still is not complete, each day we DO cross off more items on our "to do" list.  Eventually, we will complete the porch, even if it takes the entire summer.

Raising the Roof

We have known for a long time that we needed to put a new roof on this house.  The last time this house got a new roof, we put it on ourselves, and our 38-year-old daughter was all of 10 years old.  I don't think this roof owes us anything.  Although we do not think it leaks, we also do not have confidence that it will survive another harsh Wisconsin winter.

So one of our main objectives for this summer was to get a new roof installed on this house.  We saved the money for the past year, so cost is not a problem.

We have two chimneys on the house, and both of them will be coming down.  The north chimney used to service the fireplace in the den.  We tore out that fireplace at least 20 years ago, so the chimney has just stood there acting as another weak place on the roof, just waiting for water to find its way into the attic.  The second chimney on the south side used to be a conduit for both the furnace and the hot water heater.  A number of years ago, the furnace was re-routed to the back wall of the house; that left just the hot water heater venting out of the chimney.  This past year, we put in a new tankless water heater, and that, too, now vents out the side of the house.  We will be happy to see both chimneys go. Our new roof will have two less penetrations in it, and two less places for birds to try to build their nests.

Additionally, we want to replace the SolaTube in the kitchen and to install a smaller SolaTube in the main bathroom.  Putting on a new roof will give us the opportunity to do both.  We went to Milwaukee and purchased the two new SolaTubes.  They await their installation.

So what is the problem?  Well, before we can have a new roof installed, we have to replace the leaking polycarbonate roof on our covered back patio.  (In Florida, we would call this screened-in room a lanai.)  Our neighbors said they were shocked that the old roof actually held the snow load that piled on it this past winter, and we know that some of the structural boards for the roof were rotten.  In fact, when Rick tried to pry out a nail on the north wall header, his hammer went right through the rotten wood!

With the old structure down, Rick fastens the new
ledger board onto the house.

Down came our old roof.  For the past couple of weeks, we have been working to put up a new structure.  The old roof was illegally attached to the end of the house roof rafters.  We knew when we removed the old roof that those rafters would not support a new structure.  (And we are further amazed that the snow load this past winter did not collapse the whole structure!)  So Rick ripped out the soffits and installed a ledger board to the house.  Lots of lumber and lots of painting gave us the new long board which Rick hung with rafter hangers on one end and notched support at the other end.

Our garage has become a production paint shop for all of the new
boards that will go into the roof of the porch.

The first day's support work got us into a rhythm of working together
to get the cross-ties into the structure.

The view from the dining room shows that we will have
a solid structure onto which we can attach the roof panels.

More lumber and painting later, we are now to the point of putting in the support pieces every 24" between the long boards.  This should be enough to withstand snow loads for the coming winters.  Once they are in place, we will add the transition pieces from the roof line to the new panels and screw the whole thing into place.

Work continued today as more cross-ties went up.

Then we'll figure out what to do with the soffits and rebuild the side walls and screens to keep the porch bug-free.  Only then will we be ready for the roofers to come in to attach the new roof.

Of course, the only problem with this whole scheme is that Rick is facing major back surgery, I am facing a second hand surgery, and Rick needs Achilles tendon surgery. Perhaps our bodies are trying to tell us to slow down a bit.

One day at a time.  Tomorrow we will install some more braces and try to pick up the roof panels since Menard's is having a sale.  Later this week we go to Rochester and Mayo Clinic to get Rick's back checked out, and heaven only knows what will happen from there.