PORCH PROJECT - first pillar replaced

Today I replaced the corner pillar on the west end of the porch. I used a prop consisting of two 2x4s screwed together with 3" nails every foot, with a block screwed to the bottom and a longer piece screwed to the top to spread the load on the box beam when lifting. The old pillar is lying on the ground, and it wasn't nailed to anything, just gravity keeping it in place. When I jacked the roof up an inch or so the pillar stuck for a minute and then just dropped down onto the railing with a clunk. This supports my belief that if there were a drunken brawl on this porch any one of the pillars could be knocked away by a crashing body.

This is the screw jack, one of two I borrowed from Barron. I use a big screwdriver in the holes to turn it. Just behind it is one of the 16 foot stringers running the width of the porch on which the floorboards ostensibly rest. That end of it can be moved back and forth freely a foot or so, indicating that the floorboards aren't even nailed to it. They do seem to be nailed to the other one, seen in the upper left corner of the picture. This end of the nearer one isn't really resting on the wooden block beneath it either.

I cut a square piece of the 9x2 railing from the end of the porch to use as a header block for the box beam to rest on. It may have been added in the idiotic rebuild which I am trying to rectify, and inside it was white and fresh, and smelled great. The wood of the old pillar seems to be more 1930s era, very dry and easily split with a blow of the mallet. You can see the top of the prop to the right.

Below is the spot on which the supporting member rested. They put the floor down, then built the railing on top of it, then set the pillars on the railing. The weight of the roof on one 2x4 resting on the flooring for decades compressed the board to about a third of its original thickness, and to a consistency of dry crumbly cardboard. I swept it away with a broom.

Here is the treated 4x4 in place, the ends wrapped in tar paper as a bit of excessive precaution against decay. When they tear this down I hope it will still be in pretty good shape. I laid the old pillar across the end of the porch to keep the unwary from stepping off into a hole. I started around 10:30 a.m. and ended about 1:30, but it seemed like a lot longer. Shower, lunch, and goofing off for the rest of the day. I have the rest of a Wheeler and Woolsey movie to watch.