We've spent a hefty chunk of our vacation on remodeling various things. Our house is freakin' phenomenal and we love it - we're just tweaking it and personalizing it a bit. Not to mention that our front porch left a li'l something to be desired - frankly it looked like the entrance to a chicken coop. No more though, as we've demolished what was and are building everything up from scratch. We got some help in the planning and early execution stages by my dad - because he rules at stuff like that and neither me nor my wife have that much experience with carpentry - but the vast majority has been done by our very own selves.
It's really fun, actually.
The problem was that the project has been ever-expanding. At first, all we wanted to do was replace the stairs leading to our front porch and camouflage the porch's supporting pillars with some wooden structure. As we tore down the stairs, we found that the supporting framework wasn't very solid-looking, and we decided to replace it with something of more substance. Something meant to last. In the process, we also figured that we might as well replace the floorboards, since they'd obviously seen better days, and they weren't quite up to our new standard.
After we'd built the stairs and replaced the floorboards, which took us quite some time, we started having some doubts about the railing surrounding the front porch. Not so good. So I asked my dad how much work it would be to replace this AND make some matching railing system for our new, solid-as-a-rock stairs. According to him, it wasn't that much work. Good enough for us - we enlisted him as an "active consultant" for the initial stage of the process, and set about expanding the project. It soon became painfully apparent that the railing project was a lot more work than the stairs plus floorboard project. Moreover; it requires way more accuracy and is way less forgiving. At present, we've only got the final decorative boards to cut out, paint and attach before our new Carolina style front porch is a go. Better hurry up before we get some new, bright idea of a "slight" expansion to the structure....
Just like the Pied Piper/Led rats through the street/We dance like marionettes/Swaying to the Symphony of Construction.
I'm sure Dave will forgive me this rewrite of his lyrics. After all, I've spent a considerable amount of time and effort playing live renditions of his music.
It's really fun, actually.
The problem was that the project has been ever-expanding. At first, all we wanted to do was replace the stairs leading to our front porch and camouflage the porch's supporting pillars with some wooden structure. As we tore down the stairs, we found that the supporting framework wasn't very solid-looking, and we decided to replace it with something of more substance. Something meant to last. In the process, we also figured that we might as well replace the floorboards, since they'd obviously seen better days, and they weren't quite up to our new standard.
After we'd built the stairs and replaced the floorboards, which took us quite some time, we started having some doubts about the railing surrounding the front porch. Not so good. So I asked my dad how much work it would be to replace this AND make some matching railing system for our new, solid-as-a-rock stairs. According to him, it wasn't that much work. Good enough for us - we enlisted him as an "active consultant" for the initial stage of the process, and set about expanding the project. It soon became painfully apparent that the railing project was a lot more work than the stairs plus floorboard project. Moreover; it requires way more accuracy and is way less forgiving. At present, we've only got the final decorative boards to cut out, paint and attach before our new Carolina style front porch is a go. Better hurry up before we get some new, bright idea of a "slight" expansion to the structure....
Just like the Pied Piper/Led rats through the street/We dance like marionettes/Swaying to the Symphony of Construction.
I'm sure Dave will forgive me this rewrite of his lyrics. After all, I've spent a considerable amount of time and effort playing live renditions of his music.
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we've only got the final decorative boards to cut out, paint and attach before our new Carolina style front porch is a go.
Billy Bob The Builder!
That's gonna be your offical nick from now on...
:-D
But it is really rewarding to see things you build/ fix yourself get finished. Especially when it's well done.
Btw, it is an offical Dad's task to be consultant for their kids on such jobs. They can be great help, those old geezers. ;-)
Billy Bob The Builder, huh? Well; if it's alliteration, it's gotta be good.
It's something quite satisfying about doing things like that for yourself. The immediate connection between work input and result isn't always obvious in my normal line of work, and that's a big plus too.
Yeah; it's a dad thing, right? I'm really happy for the help my dad gave us on this project. Without that help, it would have been quite the daunting task, and I don't think we'd arrived at quite the same elegance of solutions as what's presently the case. Big shoutout to dad ova' heah'!
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