A Break in the Laziness

Typically on the weekend we get a few small things done and spend much time being lazy while watching football. I cant say that we've totally avoided either the football or the laziness, but today I did get more done than I do on most weekend days. It was a day of progress.

I posted a while back (or at least I think I did) about one of our newest house problems being a leaky porch. Basically the porch has settled such that the portion nearest the house is the portion that is now lower. What that means is that any rain water that falls on the porch drains toward the house....and though the cracks in the porch, causing wet wood!!! Not Good! Normally the settling of the porch would not be a huge issue, but our roof line stops too soon, leaving half the porch uncovered. Thus, much rain water pools on the porch.

Back to my progress. To fix the porch, we had options. We could pay a contractor to rip out the porch and pour a new one or fix it ourselves. We priced the contractors. It was more than we wanted to pay, so I figured I've five it a shot. I bought some items at Lowes to fix the problem. Rather than rip it out and pour a new one, I thought it would be worth a try to seal the leaks and change the angle of the porch. The first part is much easier than the second. Today I knocked out step one by ripping out the old cracked seal between the front wall of the house and the porch itself and then resealing the cracks.

Tomorrow I will use some cement crack sealer to patch up some cracks in the middle of the porch.

Then next week (I hope) I'll be using a patch kit (or so I call it) to build up the low spot. Then I'll reseal and repaint the entire porch. It sounds like a lot of work left to do, but I felt pretty happy about having finally gotten off my ass to handle the leaky seal. Step one finished. Step two tomorrow. Oh, here are a few progress pictures:

These pics are of the old ugly leaky crack before I did anything:




This is after I stripped away the old cracked seal:



This is after I applied the silicone to the cracks (it will be painted so it's ok that it's stark white):



This is the one obligatory pic of the kids since they were there watching me work every step of the way:



With helpers like those, how can this project not go perfectly! I'll make sure that they are there for ever remaining step!