Front Porch Progress

Claiming that I've made some real progress on the front porch is an overstatement. But there has been... movement.. maybe you could call it that? I took some steps on the design and got an initial layout done. But step one is barely underway. At least the design has changed some after I saw it laid out on the ground. And we got a surprise!

Lines are down!

everything is square

I got the initial lines painted down for where I wanted to put the foundation walls of the front porch. This looked pretty good to me, but kind of funny as well. It looks sort of short and squatty. I needed some wife input on this one.

We ended up deciding to go from this 16'x10' outline to a 20'x8' layout. We didn't really gain anything by having that extra 2' going away from the house, but the extra 4' to the side of the door is enough to put some seating. That's going to be more useful in the long run. First thing first, paint the new lines... move the rosemary and dig up that stump.

Ak! bugs!

Those little white specs on the stump are termites! We have an active colony of termites chewing up a stump only 7' from our house. This is not good. Needless to say, we called Orkin that day and got a quote. We already use them for mosquito treatment and some in-house stuff, so they came and put 100 gallons of termite poison around the perimeter of the house, both around the outside and inside the crawl space. They also fixed our insulation under the house, and put down a moisture barrier. we really need that done anyway.

Narrow, but wider

you can still see some of the old lines out there

decided to add an extra foot

I like this size a lot better. That corner comes a bit close to my muscadine trellis' but I don't think it creates a real bottleneck.

Code says if that's where I want the exterior lines of the foundation wall to be, then I need to have a foundation that's 6' thick and 16" wide. Since I also have to be 2 blocks underground that means I need to trench 22" deep and 16" wide. Got to allow at least 2" of the concrete on both sides of the concrete block to stay within code. Also have to plant rebar in there in just the right spots to fit the cinder blocks over the rebar. So I made a storyboard to be sure I got the depth I need.

The storyboard with foundation, block, and brick marked

and started trenching!

So we have a start. kind of. I have a design, a storyboard, and the outline of a trench. When the trench actually gets 22" deep and I have the estimated 43 bags (80lbs each) of concrete to pour the foundation it will be real. The new trench has to cut across the existing stairs, so I'll have to start some destruction soon. This is getting real!