PORCH PROJECT - siding, railing, and a stupid thing in a hole

The last couple of days have involved a lot of painting of wood in preparation for assembly into the finished porch railing. There was some drying time today which I spent cleaning up the garden and some small neglected areas. When we moved into the house there was a two foot high planter box occupying what is now the dirt strip in front of the porch, and when I tore it out there was one post that wouldn't come out so I cut it off around ground level. Today after a couple of decades I finally dug down deep enough to see what was going on. About two feet down I came to this concrete post hole filler. That is the sort of thing that is usually at ground level. There is no reason to dig three or four feet down, set your post in concrete, and then bury it under two feet of dirt. The only thing that makes any sense, and even that doesn't make any sense, is that they had this post they dug up from some other spot with the concrete on it, and then buried it that deep. Which is stupid. Nothing about this makes sense. I knew I wasn't going to get that out so I started whanging away at the post with U.S. GOVT, my loyal ball peen demolition hammer, until the concrete block cracked and I was able to pull the post out. The concrete is still down there, for the next guy to worry about.

This is what I got done over the last two days, replacing siding and putting the 9.5 inch wide upper railing on.

I had to do some cutting and re-assembling to get the railing around the support posts. I meant to give myself a little extra room but not this much! This will be covered when I reassemble the old pillars around the new posts.

These 2x2 sections are screwed to the post and railing structure, then the end and upper railing are screwed onto them The whole upper railing is secured to the low wall structure by screws from underneath every two feet.