From a Loose Tile to a Brand New Porch

The front porch is a very important part of the house. We like to spend cool summer nights hanging out on the porch with a beer, potentially an O's game on the iPad or occasionally chatting with neighbors #porchlife. The nice thing about our house is we have a front porch that we can go to if we want to be social or people watch and a private back deck that we can go to if we want to be loners.

David and I took a trip to Cape May a few years ago and toured some Victorian mansions. In this one particular mansion, the porch had hardwood floors that caught David’s eye.

Emlen Physick Estate. Victorian Dream Home!

David was inspired and decided he would like to have a hardwood floor porch one day because he did not like the tile that was currently on the porch.

Hardwood outside?

 A few months later a tile came loose on the porch. David needed to fix it, so he figured that was as good of a time as any to redo the whole porch. But somehow, a loose tile turned into an elaborate project of replacing joists and beams....

Old tile, also OMG look at Stevie.

The only part that I helped out with was removing the old tile. At first a few tiles came up easily, but then we got to a section where the tiles would not budge. We had to hammer and break them apart small piece by small piece with a Sawzall. 

Removing tiles was challenging!

David realized that the tiles on the edge of the porch came up easily because that section of the porch had likely been ruined by water and replaced with plywood before the tiles were installed. But the tiles were really stuck to the section where the original porch was still in tact underneath. It took a lot of work, but eventually we stripped all of the tile off. It was cool to see what the original 115+ year old porch looked like.

Replaced wood to the left, original porch on the right.

David’s brother-in-law came over one Saturday with a flooring nailer to help since David had never laid hardwood floors before. After opening the porch up and examining it, they realized a lot of the wood had rotted. In order to do this remodel right, they had to replace the beams and joists of the porch and then lay a plywood sub-floor. The reason a tile had come loose in the first place was because the beams holding the tile were falling down. This project quickly turned into a lot of work.

Replacing the porch structure.

After fixing the structure, they were able to lay the hardwood floor on top. David bought the hardwood flooring at Second Chance for about a $1 a square foot.

Materials.

We weren’t sure how hardwood would fare in the harsh outdoors. Our porch is covered, but of course that doesn’t mean it is completely protected from rain or snow. David did some research and figured he could protect the wood with a varnish used for wood boats called Spar. Since it is supposed to hold up in the water, it should hopefully be able to protect our porch. He sealed the wood with two coats.

Hardwood installed.

David also never cared for the metal railing on the porch and wanted a wood railing so that it could look more historically accurate. He had looked at houses in Charles Village and Hampden that had original porches and they all had square wood railings. While David was at Second Chance, he saw some that were $15 each so he decided to install them as well.

Second Chance railings.

The railings took some maneuvering to get them to fit and look good, but they achieve the look David wanted.

Installing Railings.

Recently, David also added an outlet to the porch.  I was excited for this, as it will allow us to plug in Christmas lights (and tools and stuff, I guess).

Before: House on Settlement Day.

Every year for the past two years, David has put a new seal on the edge of the porch to help protect it, but he hopes that after this year it will be good for a while. He tries to keep moisture off of it as much as possible. The porch has held up pretty well, although it is buckling slightly in some spots.

Finished porch.

Interestingly enough, we just had two tiles come lose on the steps, so we may have to repeat this process and fix the stairs with brick or cement or possibly marble!

David also painted the door.

This project was a great example of how during the remodeling process you have to be committed to finishing. Sometimes when you do some demolition you find more important issues that need to be taken care of. A relatively simple project can turn into a big renovation that's necessary for the safety of your house. 

Grown Stevie on the Hardwood floor porch.