Pieces Parts for the Porch

While my husband and I were in Richmond yesterday, we made an impulse stop at this wonderful place ...

Governor's Antiques is a HUGE architectural salvage yard.  We went there to see if we could find some inspiration for the renovation of our front porch.

Those of you who have been with me for any time at all may remember that our porch is structurally sound (after being rebuilt in 2005) but completely without any sort of pretty stuff.  Designing the details, with no evidence of what may have been there when our house was built in 1848, has been challenging.  I have planned and plotted, and reworked the design many times, and nothing has seemed to be exactly right.

We went to Governor's specifically to find a corbel or porch bracket that we can use as a pattern.  As luck would have it, the staff there had just finished moving the whole stock of corbels to an inside area, perfectly organized.

All of these are fabulous, but almost every one is WAY too large for our porch.  We weighed our options and came up with two possibilities:

I like the simple curve of this one, and the size is perfect.

This one is also nearly perfect.

We plan to make our own corbels, incorporating elements from our home's original trim, which is long gone.  

The gingerbread trim, on the eaves and above the porch and bay windows, is the original.  The porch columns and railings are not.  There is no evidence of what the original porch may have looked like.

The bat-wing-looking motif is very common in Gothic Revival decoration.  The second bracket from Governor's could easily be modified to have a cut-out that looks something like this one:

photo from Pinterest.

Our visit to Governor's helped us clarify our design for the porch brackets, but it seriously muddied the plan for the porch posts.  I have been working with the idea of square columns, with chamfered corners, boxed on the bottom, with stacked moldings at the top.  One of the posts in this pile, I'm not telling you which one, has the potential to destroy all of that planning ... in a VERY good way.

I saw three of them, and we need four.  I will let you know if the young lady at Governor's succeeds in her search for another one.

We bought the brackets that I showed you.  Either design will be great inspiration for whatever there is to come with the porch.  Seems like this is a never-ending process, with SO many choices.  Our goal is to be finished with it by the end of summer.  Wish us luck.

Lynchburg Day Trip, Part Two ... Porch Research

If you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you probably already know that one of my long-term projects is researching and recreating millwork elements for our front porch.  Our house was built as a gingerbread Gothic Revival ... during a renovation in 1967, all of the trim was stripped and replaced with colonial-style flat trim.  The front porch lost its Gothic Victorian gingerbread long before that.

I believe that this is the oldest photo that we have of our house, taken in the 1930s.  Notice the ladder leaning against the side of the house.  I have another photo that shows painters working on the front door surround.  My theory is that the front porch railing and tapered box columns were new at this point.

Our porch currently looks like this.  We rebuilt it in 2005, replacing rotting framing, posts, floor, and trim.  It has been in this state for so long because we found no clues about what it may have looked like originally.  Whatever we do is going to be our interpretation and recreation of an 1800s porch ... a fact that has made me very nervous.

Cedar 4x4 support posts, and a railing made from 2x4s and 36" grade stakes.

Last winter, one day while I was pondering my porch problem, I turned to Pinterest for inspiration.  I don't remember exactly what terms I used in my search, but whatever it was helped me find buried treasure ... this photo of the John Marshall Warwick house in Lynchburg!

Source

The Pinterest pin linked to an album of photos on Flickr, where I found this photo of the house's facade.  (There are nine photos in the album.  Click HERE if you want to see them for yourself.)

Source

Our second stop during our Lynchburg day trip last weekend was to see this house in person.  It definitely did not disappoint.

This porch has everything that I have considered using on the redesign of our porch ... double front columns, sawn balusters for the porch railing, fretwork corner brackets ... even a curved iron handrail on the stairs.  

What this porch brings to the design of our porch is the use of those little double corbels on the fascia board over each column.  

I'm more energized than ever about the prospect of finally putting pretty stuff back onto our front porch.  Can't work on it now, though, because spring is the time for garden work.  Any time I use for porch work takes away from other things that I need to be doing at this time of year.  That's okay.  Now that I have finally seen a porch that matches the feeling that I want our porch to have, I will file this away until the time is right to act on it.  This porch design keeps getting better as I wait to work on it, as I discover new ideas and refine the ideas that I already plan to use.  I may not be physically working to rebuild the pretty parts of our porch yet, but this project is definitely running in the background of my imagination.

(Want to see earlier posts where I show how the design of our porch has evolved?  Click the HERE to see all posts labeled "Porch".)

Pondering Porch Patterns

It has been cold and windy all week, the ground is covered with snow, and I have been limited to working on things indoors.  Couldn't even do stuff in the basement workshop, because it's not heated and the temperature in there dropped to 48 degrees.  I'm not one to sit, so I puttered with things in the warmer parts of the house and I schemed about long-delayed projects that I can work on when spring finally arrives.

One of those things is our front porch.  Long-time readers of this blog are well acquainted with the fact that our front porch is structurally sound, having been mostly rebuilt in 2005.  The posts, railing, and other ornamentation on the porch at that time weren't the originals, and we found absolutely no clue as to what the details might have looked like in the beginning.  It's been stressful for me to try to design something that fits with the house in its current state, and that will be appropriate for what it may have looked like when it was new in 1848.

This photo of our house was taken in the 1950s, before it was stripped of its Gothic gingerbread decoration.  The porch posts you see are not the originals.

This may be the earliest photo I have of our house.  I think it was taken in the 1930s.

1933

1940s or 50s

Our house was extensively remodeled and added onto in 1967.  The dormer and all of the gingerbread trim was removed and replaced with plain trim ... to 'simplify' the house, according to an article in the local paper that was published at the time.  (that article is HERE)  Notice that the porch now has single posts at each front corner, instead of the earlier double posts.

1960s

1970s

1980s

Our porch looks mostly like this right now.

Imagine that the front door and ceiling are painted blue, which they weren't in this photo from 2011.  The utilitarian cedar posts and 'temporary' railing are still exactly as you see.

The first bit of inspiration for its redesign came from the porch on this house in Keyser, West Virginia.  A friend kindly traced the gingerbread corner brackets for me.  The cut outs in the brackets are a lot like an element in the design of the original gable trim on our house.

Inspiration porch in West Virginia.

Cardboard cut outs of pattern for corner brackets.

The brackets are perfect!  It has been a struggle for me to come up with a design for the porch railing.  I have my heart set on Victorian sawn brackets.  I fiddled with a couple of designs at one time, but nothing felt right to me.

photoshop facsimile of our porch with the gingerbread brackets and sawn balusters that I posted in 2011.  The brackets are awesome, but I couldn't get comfortable with that baluster design.

Last week, in a fit of cabin fever from being snowed in, I sorted through my photos and I came across this:

2002 photo of Idlewild porch railing.

It was a photo that I took of the front porch railing at Idlewild, an abandoned Gothic Revival mansion surrounded by a modern subdivision in the city of Fredericksburg.

File photo from Free Lance Star.

photo of Idlewild porch that I took in 2002.

2002

While I was at Idlewild taking photos that first time in 2002, I brought along posterboard and markers, and I traced the porch balusters ... thinking that I might be able to use the design for something at some point.  It's a good thing that I did because, in the succeeding thirteen years, Idlewild has been neglected and abused, set on fire twice by arsonists, vandalized, and shaken almost to the point of ruin by the earthquake in 2011.  What was once a grand, restorable home is now all but lost.

photo taken by a firefighter during the blaze in 2002

2008 photo

2008 photo

December 2014

As you can see from the photo below, it's a good thing that I traced the porch balusters when I did, because they are all gone now.  Whether they were removed for preservation or stolen, I don't know.

December 2014 photo

The Idlewild balusters are only 25 inches high, far too low for a legal, safe railing on our porch.  I decided to use my rough 2002 tracing and see if I liked the design if I stretched them to 30 inches.

Cleaned up posterboard pattern of the original Idlewild baluster, based on my 2002 tracing.

To stretch the pattern, I cut it into one-inch strips, gluing each strip 1/4th of an inch apart onto another piece of posterboard.  

I cut out the new pattern, clamped it into place on the front porch, took a photo, and played with Photoshop again.  The facsimile railing on the left represents three whole balusters in the space between the posts.  The one on the right is arranged like the balusters were at Idlewild, with half balusters attached to the posts and whole ones between.

Un-photoshopped photo of the baluster pattern, cut out of posterboard, taped to a yardstick and weighted with clothespins.

Through the magic of Photoshop, I can see what the railing would look like with these balusters in two different arrangements.

I like the one on the right best.  It looks like my long search for a final design for our porch may finally be over.  I love the way the balusters look in the Idlewild configuration.  It reminds me of the lacy appearance of the original trim on our house.

As far as I'm concerned, I consider the hardest part of this project to be complete.  Design is finished, materials are sourced but not yet ordered.  In this world of composite and vinyl, it took a while for me to find reasonably priced true one-inch thick boards that I can order when I'm ready to sit down at the band saw to start cutting the brackets and balusters.  (not gonna happen any time soon, and I'm okay with that.)

Front Porch Progress

I'm still working on the front porch ... a little at a time ... still breaking the job into really small, easily accomplished bits.  This weekend's part of the project was to choose and install crown molding to trim the newly painted beadboard ceiling.  I got half of the project finished.

The irregularity in the gap at the top of the molding is from the wavy old-house ceiling.  This will be hidden once the crown molding is up.

I am installing a two-piece crown, using a piece of baseboard upside down to trim the facing wall, and a crown molding installed over that.  While I was standing at Home Depot, I could only decide on which baseboard to use, so I bought that and will choose a crown later this week.

In the meantime, I am reveling in this latest small accomplishment.  The baseboard-crown-backer is up, and caulked, and the porch is looking a lot prettier ... little by little.

Feeling Blue ... In a Good Way

It's been a long, hard, three-day project, but the painting of the ceiling of our front porch is finished!  Those of you who speculated that I would be painting it blue were absolutely correct (you know me so well.)  I again consulted my trusty Farrow and Ball brochure color and decided that "Parma Gray" was the paint color closest to the color of the summer sky ... and it coordinates really well with our front door, which I painted last week using the color of F&B's "Oval Room Blue".

Why did this seemingly simple paint project take three days, you ask?  When we rebuilt our porch in 2005, the only parts of the existing porch that we could save were the roof itself and the floor framing (neither of which were original to our 1848 house) .  Rotten beams and joists were replaced or reinforced.  Trim and beadboard overhead (which were old but , again, not original) were replaced with Azek (pvc board). 

Azek is supposed to take paint very well, but it must be cleaned to remove any dirt or greasy film.  My painter recommended that I use denatured alcohol to scrub the ceiling down thoroughly.  Working overhead scrubbing the ceiling was exhausting.  I worked in shifts and finished the job over the course of an entire day.

Here it is ... all clean and ready for paint.

(pay no attention to those spiderwebs in the doorway)

The manufacturer says that primer isn't necessary if Azek is painted with a quality acrylic paint, but I wasn't taking any chances.  I primed the ceiling with bonding primer ... rolling it on with a hot dog roller and following with a 4" brush to remove any roller marks and to work the primer into all of the grooves of the beadboard.

By the time I had spent an entire day scrubbing the ceiling, and the next afternoon applying primer, I assure you that my neck and shoulders were really, really sore.  I was on a roll, however, and I wasn't going to let pain get in the way of finishing this project in a timely manner.

Day Three was the pay off ... I finally was going to see some COLOR!

Just like I did with the primer, I applied the first coat of color with a roller and followed behind with a brush.  When painting things like beadboard (or siding) it's important to work in long sections from one end of the ceiling (or wall) to the other, to keep a wet edge and avoid lap marks.

I applied the second coat of color with a 3" brush ... no roller this time.  I wanted the look of a hand-brushed finish, which brings out the subtle satin sheen of the paint I chose.

It feels wonderful to step outside onto the porch and see this new ceiling color.  There is still a LOT of work to be done before I can say that our porch is finished ... so I'm breaking this job into small, easily accomplished mini projects so I can wallow in a rewarding feeling of instant gratification after I complete each one. 

In some of the photos above, you see glimpses of one of my most important tools for working on any project up high ... my little rolling scaffolding. 

I bought this scaffolding at the beginning of the renovation of our house in 2003, and it has been one of the best purchases EVER.  Any time I have to work on a ceiling or high up on walls, this gives me a large, safe platform from which to work.  Without this, I cannot imagine how difficult it would have been to paint the porch ceiling.

Project Checklist:

Front door?  One more coat of paint to go, after I remove the hardware and caulk the cracks.

Ceiling?  Finished!!

Next?  Crown molding.  Going shopping for that later today.