One thing leads to another

The front porch is about one-third completed now, needing many additional boards to finish up the floor. I have moved my equipment and materials over to the section that has a new floor installed, and will start on the rest of the porch in the coming days—weather permitting. I still need to add reinforcing lumber along the aged and weakened timbers. I’ll do this before starting on the floor for the remaining sections.

This porch business is not really a high-priority project; for overall livability, it does not affect the house or its future occupants so much. However, the psychological effect cannot be overestimated: The sight of the peeling, flaking boards, the very stuff you step on when you first approach the entrance, is a source of malaise every time I enter the house. I don’t like the crunching and gritty feel of the old paint underfoot, the dried and worn boards that have outlived by many years their usefulness, the gaping hole that actually opened up—an old patch job that was slapped together by someone way back when. I hate all of this, just want to be rid of it—to see it gone, replaced with fresh lumber screwed into more fresh lumber underneath, knowing that this work will last for future summers, winters, the weather-resistant wood welcoming the snows and rains and footsteps of children and their parents, the solid stuff underfoot inspiring confidence, pride in coming home to such a tidy and stable little abode. The porch is going to look great—I just know it.

I have even started to think more radically about revamping the front of the house altogether. As is typical with these little Cape Cod-style homes, the front is semi-enclosed, having something of a skirt around the front porch. This skirt is about three feet high and topped by a ledge that you can put planters, flower boxes on, or just sit on if you like. My idea is this: To do away with the solid skirt, with its horrid asbestos shingles; leave the ledge as more of a railing—like you would see on the front of Victorian or maybe colonial homes with their sweeping porches and banisters and railings. Open up that skirt (for lack of a better term), replace its solid façade with spindles that tie in with the new woodwork of the flooring and add as well some banisters and a wooden set of steps to lead up from the new concrete walkway. It may clash, however, and I don’t want that. I would rather keep it the way it is, and not necessarily like it, rather than change it to a conflicting style and like it even less. I have seen what happens when people hit upon what they thought was a good idea, execute the plan, and then lay bare the horrible results—usually right there on the front of their house. The effect can be somewhat humorous at times, but is often more ugly than anything else.

In any case, I plan to do away with the steps that now lead up to the porch They are an amateurish and over-wrought attempt at masonry, made of crudely-laid bricks over a concrete form. It is a difficult decision for me to just do away with them, since they actually work just fine as steps, are not hazardous or in any way dangerous to trod upon. However, I have convinced myself that they are unbelievable ugly, bring down my mood every time I see the things—and therefore must go. It is not just an excuse to wield the heavy and stone-smashing maul—an easy outlet for my pent-up rage. Although there is that, I must admit. It is instead a general renewing of most elements of the house, the harmonizing of the different pieces that have to work together. Why have a beautiful new porch with ragged and poor-looking steps leading up to it? Why, I ask you? So—as you can see—one thing leads to another.