Painting the porch railings
Nov. 6th, 2011 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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fandom_jointsI spent a couple hours today doing the trashiest painting job ever, and in spite of that, the house looks a lot better.
(Our house is not the worst-kept house in the neighborhood -- we're second or third, after the elderly guy who does a lot for the local seniors and keeps his yard beautifully and refuses to paint his house or let the town paint it for him.)
About 3 or 4 years ago, I went to paint the decorative railings on the porch roof and discovered that they really needed replacing. But I didn't have time to do it then, so I used bondo to replace the worst-rotted spots, and screws and joint plates to keep bits from falling apart, did a quick paint job and left the replacement until the next summer.
By the next summer, a variety of other things in the house ate our budget, and we ignored the porch.
A storm brought down a section of the railing that wasn't clearly visible from the street. We pulled the rest of that section down, and the six feet of railing fell apart into splinters that fit easily into trash cans. We ignored the rest of it some more.
Then we had the summer when it rained every single weekend. Mildew grew on everything, including the porch pillars and railings. Power-washing is not an option. We ignored it yet again.
This summer, we discovered that the beams holding up part of the porch are rotten on one side. Really, we need to replace the entire porch, but we don't have the cash for that, either. The railing is looking really disreputable, mostly because of the flaking paint, and only slightly because of the leaning posts and loose rails.
I finally decided that even a bad paint job (which is the only kind possible on a substrate that flimsy) was better than nothing, and spent a few hours painting it. Instead of doing a reputable job (I used to be pro), I 1)did a quick-and-dirty scraping job, 2)soaked a piece of open-cell foam in paint and wrapped it around each rail. 3)Smeared up and down and dabbed a bit to get into crevices, and three sides of one rail are done. (I didn't even bother painting the side of the railing towards the house. Paint is not going to prolong the life of the railings at this point.)
This uses a up a lot of paint, and gets paint all over the area. But it was fast, and the sections I've finished look a lot better. I'm hoping to get to the rest some morning this week. I also need to use some of a product called "Yankee plastic" which is basically roofing tar, to fill some cracks in the roof.
All I really want is to get the porch through another winter without it damaging the house or being an active disgrace. I wish I'd done this last spring, but I was still delusional about the getting the porch replaced back then. (That was before the rental house burnt down.)
(The rental house is being rebuild, at long last! It took months before we got the first check from insurance, and another full month before the mortgage company released the check to us. But the builders have gutted the house, replaced the windows, reframed the section of roof for the dormer -- we're adding a bathroom -- and replaced the wiring and plumbing. Pretty soon the walls will go in, then the kitchen and finish work.)
(Our house is not the worst-kept house in the neighborhood -- we're second or third, after the elderly guy who does a lot for the local seniors and keeps his yard beautifully and refuses to paint his house or let the town paint it for him.)
About 3 or 4 years ago, I went to paint the decorative railings on the porch roof and discovered that they really needed replacing. But I didn't have time to do it then, so I used bondo to replace the worst-rotted spots, and screws and joint plates to keep bits from falling apart, did a quick paint job and left the replacement until the next summer.
By the next summer, a variety of other things in the house ate our budget, and we ignored the porch.
A storm brought down a section of the railing that wasn't clearly visible from the street. We pulled the rest of that section down, and the six feet of railing fell apart into splinters that fit easily into trash cans. We ignored the rest of it some more.
Then we had the summer when it rained every single weekend. Mildew grew on everything, including the porch pillars and railings. Power-washing is not an option. We ignored it yet again.
This summer, we discovered that the beams holding up part of the porch are rotten on one side. Really, we need to replace the entire porch, but we don't have the cash for that, either. The railing is looking really disreputable, mostly because of the flaking paint, and only slightly because of the leaning posts and loose rails.
I finally decided that even a bad paint job (which is the only kind possible on a substrate that flimsy) was better than nothing, and spent a few hours painting it. Instead of doing a reputable job (I used to be pro), I 1)did a quick-and-dirty scraping job, 2)soaked a piece of open-cell foam in paint and wrapped it around each rail. 3)Smeared up and down and dabbed a bit to get into crevices, and three sides of one rail are done. (I didn't even bother painting the side of the railing towards the house. Paint is not going to prolong the life of the railings at this point.)
This uses a up a lot of paint, and gets paint all over the area. But it was fast, and the sections I've finished look a lot better. I'm hoping to get to the rest some morning this week. I also need to use some of a product called "Yankee plastic" which is basically roofing tar, to fill some cracks in the roof.
All I really want is to get the porch through another winter without it damaging the house or being an active disgrace. I wish I'd done this last spring, but I was still delusional about the getting the porch replaced back then. (That was before the rental house burnt down.)
(The rental house is being rebuild, at long last! It took months before we got the first check from insurance, and another full month before the mortgage company released the check to us. But the builders have gutted the house, replaced the windows, reframed the section of roof for the dormer -- we're adding a bathroom -- and replaced the wiring and plumbing. Pretty soon the walls will go in, then the kitchen and finish work.)
