Balcony Porch Repair

Balcony as seen in September 2014
(attic windows were being restored)

Another project tackled earlier this month by Kenny Schrader and his brother Jake (from Kenny's Carpentry) began with a single small rotted piece of trim at the base of one of the front "boxes" at each corner of the balcony porch above the front door. It turns out that, when my general contractor Peter R. "Pete" LaRoque of Mocksville, NC, renovated that porch in January 2009, he and his crew did not build it to last. It was disheartening to find how much rot had occurred since it appears to have been built with untreated lumber, not wrapped in tar paper, not well primed or sealed, and not well-protected with the paint or stain he used. Here's what Kenny uncovered:

By the time we dug down into it, it seemed best to rebuild both porch boxes as well as the front railing.

One good outcome of this: Kenny built into the face of them a design closer to what my architect Sam Binkley had envisioned and drawn all those years ago...and I also got him to make the rails easier to see through. I like watching what's going on when I'm out there!

Of course, these are only primed at this point, and on my future agenda in the next six months is to get the whole house painted. But I am awfully glad we could rebuild these with this design, instead of what you see in the picture at the top of this blog entry: