My whole goal for the week was to finish all the smaller projects on the front porch so I can finish this week (and I still have two more days) staining the wood on the porch because once I put the first coat of pine tar on the porch, it will take 72 hours to dry. So all of these other projects that require you to walk across the front porch need to be finished first. I think I’m on track to do that in the next few days. I’m going to try my best!
Yesterday I was a little late because I decided to give one more coat of paint to the columns, the white parts of the railings and the newel posts. After finishing that, I decided to install the new porch lights. Installing the lights was an easy part. Accessing the lights was a challenge.
For some reason I can’t understand, I can’t open the door to my workshop. And, of course, the new lights were kept in the workshop. After spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to open the door, I noticed that one of the windows was slightly ajar. So I took my ladder, opened the window and looked inside to see where the lights were. They were close to the window, so with the help of a 6-inch paint roller (without the roller cover), I was able to reach them, hook the lid of the box on the paint roller, drag them closer to the window, open the lid of the box, hook the top of each light on the end of the paint roller, and lift it through the window. It’s always so frustrating when stupid things consume my time (I’m sure you can relate), and what a ridiculous coincidence this was! What should have taken me five minutes (opening the door, grabbing the new lights, and heading to the front porch) ended up taking about 40 minutes of my time just to get my new lights out of the shop. I could have made a trip to Lowe’s and bought new lights in that time!
Anyway, the bad news is that I have no idea why my workshop door won’t open, so now it’s holding a lot of my tools hostage and now I have a new problem to solve. The good news is that I salvaged my new lights and was able to install them yesterday.
The new lights are the ones I originally bought for the workshop, but they ended up being too big. Instead of returning them, I kept them and decided to trade them in for the smaller lights on the front porch. Here’s a comparison of the two, with the new light on the left and the original front porch light on the right.
I really love this larger size for our front porch. And anyway I like the design of these much better. The smaller lights will be perfect for the workshop, so I put them in a box and will set them up in the workshop later.
And of course, my little friend Tiger kept me company all day yesterday.
So yesterday I crossed two projects off my list: the columns (along with the railings and newel posts) and the new lights.
I was really hoping to completely finish the fascia boards as well. You’ll be happy to know that I at least put the front fascia board on, so they’re ready to caulk and paint.
But I’m having a really hard time completely removing this side board. I got most of it out, but the last bit gave me trouble.
I thought the biggest challenge would be getting all these screws out of the ends of the porch boards. Each was screwed to the edge of the fascia board. All screw holes were covered with exterior wood filler that dried as hard as concrete. So figuring that out took a lot of time and patience. Once they were out, I expected the fascia board to come off easily.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. I’m telling you, when I build something, I don’t expect it to ever fall apart. So I’ll have to work on that last bit today so I can fit the rest of the new fascia boards.
Last night I was literally out until 9:00, working with the light on my phone, trying to turn this off. But I finally gave up and decided I just needed to call it a night.
I also need to do some paint touch-ups around the ceiling, touch-ups that should have been done when I painted the ceiling but never got around to doing them.
But I’m making progress on these little projects. I’ve almost got them all done, which means I’ll be able to clean this all up pretty soon and finally stain the porch boards with pine tar.
It’s coming! I can’t wait to finish this and show you the final porch!
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Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 upper that my husband Matt and I purchased in 2013. Matt has MS and can’t do physical work, so I do most of the house work myself. You can learn more about me here.
