To the top of the block

After our first wedding anniversary, we went home and I started watching a TV show called "How to Build a Deck". She still makes fun of me for doing that, but hey, everyone has their version of romance. Then the next weekend I started building her a deck on our first house. For our 20th wedding anniversary this year, we went and picked up all of the framing material I would need for the front porch. I hope I get to keep building her decks for another 20 or 30 years!

On our 20th anniversary

Now I'm ready to put all of that pressure treated framing lumber to some good use! Now that all of the block work is done it's time to frame under the floor, and remove the old porch. When I finished off the top course of block, I put in J-bolts to secure a sill plate, so that goes on first. And if my storyboard was correct to begin with, the 2x8 framing should go on top of that and leave exactly 3/4" for the flooring.

Sill plate is on and attached to the J-bolts

Old porch starting to come down

Since the house was built in 1932, what do you think the chances are there is some rotten wood under that old porch? It's a concrete porch so there's no way.

Well, there's a way. How do they always get rotten wood under the doors? They didn't have flashing back then, but this was pretty bad. All I could do, really, was cut away the rot and replace it with PT 2x10 and hope the corner of my house didn't collapse in the process.

rotten wood!

Rot and an open hole into the crawl space

Old porch is gone

at least the block wall came out level

and all I can do is rebuild the floor joists with some pressure treated stuff. There was rot on the joists under the floor and both layers of the rim around that corner. The hardest part was cutting out the rotten stuff to get a clean line so I could put in solid new lumber.

New stuff going in

Even had rot on the 2nd layer

I tried to get a picture from this same angle every day I got to work on it

So after I got that rotten wood replaced I got the ledger board up and properly attached to code using LedgerLock bolts. The floor rim joists were 2x10's, and the ledger boards were 2x8's. The top of the ledger had to be at the right finished height to make the floor come up at the right height. And building code says that flooring must be 3/4" below the front door sill for some reason. And it has to be bolted once per floor joist that you are screwing into, so I put LedgerLock bolts every foot or so just to be safe. By the end of that day (a Sunday), I had all of the boards up except the one that had to screw into the chimney masonry.

Up next, flashing, rim joists, framing, and a surprise!