Well we had a short reprieve from rain today so Ryan and I got started on our porch project, replacing the supports under the porch so we can raise it up a little (it was really tilted on one side).  It did rain a bit but it was a light rain.

By lunch we had braved the jacking up/replacing supports and gotten the back corner and side done – it was nerve racking!  We also put in some reinforcements along the way.

New supports

reinforcing the beams

After lunch (and another trip to home depot) we moved onto the front corner – this was pretty nerve racking because there was some pretty extensive carpenter ant damage in the corner, so we put a few more supports in than what was there originally.  The side is still not level but it’s much better than before.

Front corner all done

As we moved on to the front of the porch, we didn’t plan to raise it up much in the front, just replace any supports that needed it.  However as we removed the wood we found TONS of carpenter ant damage – the wood is just rotting away.

Here are some pictures of the damage:

Carpenter Ant damage

That's supposed to be a 2x8 solid piece of wood!

Even worse at the front stairs

Now we have a little more work than originally planned.  First off we bought some ant/termite killer and sprayed the porch down.  Then we’ll have to replace the completely rotted wood and reinforce a lot more of the porch than we planned.  Unfortunately it’s raining again right now and supposed to rain again tomorrow.

So while we hoped to be done with the reinforcements today and on to putting in the new decking we bought – we now have another day to spend working on the underside of the porch.  Maybe by Friday we can start putting the decking on 🙁

It’s going to be a long week if we also want to get to working on the siding/window panels!  We got the wood to get started on them but now we just need the time.  I guess we needed 2 weeks off instead of just 1!