Porch roof progress

Last time I promised photos of the progress on the office exterior.

This is an example of the trim that had to be taken down. There is some pretty bad cracking of the wood, and there were areas of rot on them as well.

Here we can see that I have removed some of the ceiling panels and installed a temporary brace.

This is looking underneath the roof at the exposed sheathing. I’m fairly confident that the OSB is practically brand new because the building had a new roofing job done last year. Obviously I’ve got some patchwork to do.

This is directly above the middle porch column. I had been banging on the back side of these pieces to loosen them from the joist and all the rotted wood fell to the ground. Yes, you can see the underside of the roof through the hole in the joist. Looks like plenty of bugs have called this place home over the years as well.

Wide shot of the roof after the front joists have been removed. As you can see on the left, one of them is currently serving as a temporary support column. That whole end of the roof sags down almost a foot without it there. As part of the rehab, after this photo was taken I sistered some 2x6 boards onto the ends of the joists to provide a stronger nailing surface for the front joists.

Alright, this particular view made me angry when I saw it. The old joist is barely above the center porch column. The new piece of lumber seen here is one I put in there, and I added another after this picture was taken. Basically, the column was holding up the roof by the 3/8” plywood. I certainly hope the original builder didn’t do other jobs like this!

The new front joists are now installed. I’d like to keep the temporary supports in until I have finished repairing the roof sheathing, but since the one on the far left is standing in one of our driveways, I may not have a choice in how soon I need it gone.

That about sums up the progress made on the porch roof so far. I’ll talk about the rest of the exterior work in a separate entry. And I’ll have a new video to debut. So keep checking in!