Finishing the Practice Roof

I got all of the finishing touches put on the little roof, so let's see how she turned out! This is the perfect addition to the driveway. We now have a clean and dry entryway to get from the side.

starting to paint some

missed the front of that one trim board - oops

Finishing starts with primer and paint. I used an exterior kilz and Brite White color exterior paint. I started with the columns, then got the trim around the roof. Then primed the ceiling before putting the finishing touches on. The roof trim had to finish the white paint before taking the next step.

All that trim paint

Now I added the cedar shake shingles to the face

Wanted to paint the door and the ceiling the same color

All said and done!

We love this little roof. It was the perfect test project to experiment with the technique before taking on the big porch roof. I added cedar shake shingles to the front. We wanted to paint the door & ceiling the same color, Kelley picked out this salmon (pink but she called it salmon to make me feel more manly about it) and I really like it. Not every house can pull off a pink door, but this one can. It's a bold choice. The house siding was all white when we bought it, we painted the house this dark gray about 5 years ago. I love the gray. Having this little pink accent is a really cool touch. We also did the front door this same pink.

Porch Progress, Now with More Columns

Here we go!

The start of some columns - a fail

Walls and columns

The right size boards, finally, for the columns

starting to get some primer on the walls too

Walls are painted, caps are on, and the first column is finished

Got the front wall up and finished off too

Side wall is all stretched out too, and capped

The inside is painted out too

I got the tapered columns done

Now with more taper

So cool to see it all come together

So the columns. I started out with 1x8's because the main support posts are 6x6's and I thought (mistakenly) that cutting a 1x8 down to a 1x6 size on one end would give me the taper I was after. Then, I had some 1x10's to cover the edges of the 1x8's, tapering to the new width. Turns out, when you start with a 13" base you need something wider than 7.25" to cover the base. Since I already had the 1x10's on hand, I got to taperin' and put the other sides up.

I pulled off those 1x8's and used them as trim boards on the little test roof. Then had to go buy some 1x12's to fill in the long sides. I started with 10' boards and cut them down to the right length. Needed 3 of them, one for each column. Each side of the column was less than 5' long so I could get both sides out of one 10' long board. The 1x10's were almost wide enough to cover the gap at the base, so there was enough room there for the 1x12's to fill in.

So I cut the 1x10's to length first, then centered the 6x6 width on one end. Cut from those marks back to the corners to create the tapered look. For the final finish, cut an angle into the edges to make them fit exactly in the space inside of the molding. Then cut the 1x12's to the outside width of the other boards to form the complete taper.

Kelley painted the walls one day when I was at work. One coat of primer and two coats of paint, over a few days. It was really cool to come home to some dark walls. Spot on!! I put the caps on the knee walls that night. The caps were already painted so it was an easy time with the framing nailer.

The finished look for both the handrail walls and the tapered columns is amazing. I am so happy with how they both turned out!

Trim and more Trim

On the small test roof we're down to the little details. The hard part that I really wanted to work on was building the roof. Framing to shingles is done. Now all the little grunt work to finish the project. like trim. I hate trim. and I'm not very good at it, but I have to come up with something to finish off this thing.

Me, inside. Note the ceiling joists

Hung the beadboard ceiling and light fixture

Now with an exterior fixture too

The lights even work!

The door trim was half rotten

New door trim!

Trimming out that corner

Added the 1x4 on the bottom of the face and the first 2 boards of fascia

Front fascia is done and cut at the ends

these cuts on the end of the boards is awkward. Need to come up with a better system for that

I ran some of that custom cut cove molding around the beadboard ceiling

Even more cove molding

I added and cut the side board too. Still weird.

It's looking clean, but still have a way to go

After getting the ceiling joists installed, I was able to tackle the electrical. There was a light above the roof, so I had to drop that cord inside the roof. I added a gang box to the center of the ceiling and an exterior box on the left corner and roughed in wiring. Then after I had the 1x4 around the bottom of the exterior and the beadboard (plywood) ceiling installed I could attach the fixtures. Everything worked!

I made a bunch of cove molding on the router for the front porch. Then I installed it around the base of the posts here, and all around the ceiling too. Installed some 1x6 scraps around the tops of the post and cove molding around that. Lots of cove. Cove everywhere.

I trimmed around the fascia with some leftover 1x8 that I had from the front porch. A complete failure on the tapered columns left me with some boards that were the right size for the job. So I installed to cover the framing around the outside of the rim.

The door jamb was originally half buried in dirt because the original concrete pad was too small. That meant it had some serious rot at the bottom. This size concrete pad fixed half of the problem, but I still had to demo the door frame & trim there, and come up with something else. I measured before demo, and a 1x6 on the sides would give roughly the same width. I had to cut the aluminum siding to put the framing against the house, and still needed some way to cover up the cut edge, so for the top of the door trim I decided to go with this wide angle thing on a 1x8. I think it turned out pretty cool, but different from what anyone else would expect!

So in the next post we'll put on all of the finishing touches