My entire goal for the week was to get all of the smaller projects done on the front porch so that I could finish up this week (and I still have two more days) with staining the wood on the porch because once I get the first coat of pine tar on the porch, it will take 72 hours to dry. So all of these other projects that require me to walk on the front porch need to be finished first. I think I’m on track to get it done in the next couple of days. I’m going to try my hardest!
I did get a little behind yesterday because I decided to do one more coat of paint on the columns, the white parts of the railings, and the newel posts. After I finished that, I decided to install the new porch lights. Installing the lights was easy part. Accessing the lights was a challenge.
For some reason that I can’t figure out, I can’t get the door to my workshop open. And of course, the new lights were being stored in the workshop. After spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to get the door open, I noticed that one of the windows was cracked open just a little bit. So I got my ladder, opened the window, and peeked inside to see where the lights were. They happened to be near the window, so with the help of a 6-inch paint roller (sans roller cover), I was able to reach them, hook the lid of the box on the paint roller, drag them closer to the window, open the lid of the box, and hook the top part of each light onto the end of the paint roller and lift it through the window. It’s always so frustrating when stupid things eat up my time (I’m sure you can relate), and what a ridiculous fluke this was! What should have taken me five minutes (opening the door, grabbing the new lights, and heading to the front porch) ended up taking about 40 minutes of my time just to get my new lights out of the workshop. I could have made a trip to Lowe’s and bought new lights in that amount of time! 😀
Anyway, the bad news is that I have no idea why my workshop door won’t open, so it’s now holding a lot of my tools hostage, and I now have a new problem to solve. The good news is that I did rescue my new lights and I was able to install them yesterday.
The new lights are the ones that I originally bought for the workshop, but they ended up being too big. Rather than returning them, I held onto them and decided to swap them out for the smaller lights that were on the front porch. Here’s a comparison of the two, with the new light on the left and the original front porch light on the right.
I really love this larger size for our front porch. And I like the design of these much better anyway. The smaller lights will be perfect for the workshop, so I boxed those up and I’ll install those on the workshop later.
And of course, my little buddy Tiger was keeping me company all day yesterday.
So I got two projects checked off of my list — the columns (along with the railings and newel posts) and the new lights.
I was really hoping to get the fascia boards completely finished as well. You’ll be happy to know that I did at least get the front fascia board on, so these are ready for caulk and paint.
But I’m having a heck of a time getting this side board completely off. I did get a lot of it off, but that last bit gave me problems.
I thought the biggest challenge would be to get all of these screws on the ends of the porch boards out. They were all covered with exterior wood filler which dried about at hard as concrete. So digging that out took a lot of time and patience. Once those were out, I expected the fascia board to come off easily.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. I’m telling you, when I build something, I don’t expect it to ever come apart. 😀 So I’ll have to work on this last bit today so that I can get the rest of the new fascia boards on.
I was literally outside last night until 9:00, working by the light of my phone, trying to get this off. But I finally gave up and decided I just needed to call it a night.
I also still need to do some paint touchups around the ceiling — touchups that should have been done back when I painted the ceiling but I never got around to them.
But I am making progress on these little projects. I almost have them all finished, which means that I’ll be able to get all of this cleaned up very soon and finally get the porch boards stained with the pine tar.
It’s coming along! I can’t wait to get this finished and show you the final porch!
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Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.