Continuing work on the portico.
Lyssa and I had some laughs batting ideas back and forth. She was keen on raccoons living in my roof, and we both agreed a sagging roof on an old house would be wonderful. Lyssa commented, “You could leave just parts of the flat roof, indicating that the roof fell in some time ago, but the old woman had some sense to have that nonsense hauled away.” Indeed! I told her, “She did have the sense of not wanting garbage on the porch…but she’s not paying anybody $10K for a new roof! She doesn’t sit out there anyway…too many raccoons.” And, an idea formed in my head: a portico with the remaining area enclosed with railings alone, as though it were once a sunny place to sit. The raccoons in the roof…still to come.
Now that the front walls are permanently in place, I was able to cut the front porch boards using skinny craft sticks. I am usually careful to weed out the warped and damaged sticks, but this time it’s their turn to shine! :D I even left some gaps and used the rounded factory edges on the outer edge of the porch. Just as I had done for Baslow Ranch, I especially wore out the boards at the top of the steps. For the rest of the boards, I roughed them up with an awl. I also didn’t weight them down as the glued dried so some of them are lifted. I think all of this adds to the worn look of the house.
I had to add a cross board made of strip wood to split a portion of the porch since the craft sticks come cut to six inches in length and the porch is deeper than that. Behind that line, I continued with skinny sticks cut to size.
I took some random parts for mocking up the sun porch, but these aren’t necessarily the items I will use.
This allows for a covered entrance and full use of the rest of the porch. And, yes, I can rust out that metal furniture and put a worn out cushion on it so the old woman can sit outside and feed the raccoons. :D
I finished applying the skinny craft sticks to the porch and then applied a paint wash of Slate Grey by Americana and black. I then followed that up with a wash of pure black. I might do some more to the porch later, but for now I just needed to get rid of the shiny new wood.
I also cut and painted the trim that lines the porch above the brick foundation.
Now it’s starting to look like the real thing to me.
