It was rainy for a few days this week, which delayed my work since it involved a lot of painting. Over the past three working days I have completed most of the cosmetic restoration of the railing wall. I was able to salvage much of the original siding, and only had to buy one 16 foot piece, the top one across the inside of the wall as seen below. It was mostly just painting, sanding, cutting and nailing which is not as exciting as demolition and takes longer.
One of the many useful features the old porch lacked was the cutouts at the bottom. Since it was only open at one end, all the leaves and blossoms shed by the wisteria had to be swept the entire length of the porch. That's what those cutouts are for - if you look you will see them on a lot of porches, so you can sweep stuff out. Some of the details came out a bit weirdly where the end parts come together, but it achieves my basic need of not having anything jump out at you from ten feet away that makes you say what the hell is that.
This is the wood for the pillar restoration. The short ones below are salvaged from the original pillars and the longer ones are new wood I bought today. I hope I have made my last purchase of materials for this, but I may end up having to buy one or two little things I can't predict yet.
Addendum: I just did the math and not counting the trip to the dump and the gallon of paint I bought today this project comes out to almost exactly $700. That is way more than I had hoped, but about a tenth of what I would pay to have somebody else do it. I was hoping for more like $400, but it's something I won't have to do again so I am glad I did it as well as I could. I think the wood I salvaged saved me about $150 - $200.
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