PORCH PROJECT - frame up

I borrowed this gigantic saw from Barron, and it really pays to have friends who can loan you good tools. I got rid of my crappy old circular saw because it isn't supposed to cause clouds of smoke to spew from the burned black ends of the wood you are trying to cut. I didn't know what the problem was so I stuck it out front a few weeks ago, with a warning label on it, and it went away. I set the sawhorses up inside the porch thinking it would be more convenient but that was kind of stupid. What wasn't stupid was screwing a couple of blocks onto the sawhorses to keep the boards from moving around - that worked really well.

I got the frame put together in spite of the fact that I dropped everything it was possible to drop as many times as it was possible to drop it. Because of the pillar at the center it was necessary to make two frames with a space between them. Anything that rests on concrete is held in place with screws, and anything not resting on concrete is secured with nailed brackets. Vertical load is the main concern - the frame has to distribute the weight, like a cat burglar wearing skis because the floor will set off the alarm if anything over ten pounds is placed on it. That's how you learn things about life - from heist movies. The side-to-side stringers are roughly two feet apart, and the surface boards will be going across them from front to back. It should distribute the load well enough that if I ever had any three hundred pound friends they could stand on one leg on any board and not go crashing through. All my six hundred pound friends would have to stay on the porch because I don't know how much the living room floor could take.
The toughest thing about this for me is buying things. I agonize over whether a three dollar piece of cheese is an extravagant luxury, so spending over a hundred dollars on a carload of lumber is really difficult. I have to keep reminding myself that this is something we will be using every day for as long as we are in this house, and doing it right the first time is cheaper than trying to fix it later. I try to get maximum value for what I spend so making this porch last as long as possible makes its per day cost a matter of pennies.