Susanna Week: painted porch

Perhaps you caught a glimpse of the porch in my painted chair post and noticed that something was different. Something is! The porch is finished and painted!

Last fall we had our old concrete front porch ripped out:

Old front porch: a mixture of cinder blocks and concrete, and a couple oddly proportioned steps.

 And a new one built and poured:

New front porch: all concrete, bigger overall, including bigger steps.

The new one is larger, smoother and most importantly, slopes away from the house so that water does not leak into the basement. At least that's how it works now, but it didn't when it was first re-built last October. After the first fall rain, we called the concrete guy to come back and patch the area by the front door to make sure it sloped AWAY from the house.  Then several months went by and we noticed that the corner was slumping and cracking.

So the concrete guy came back in May, ripped out the top, inserted more rebar and poured the top again. This time adding an important feature: a seam down the top to allow for movement in the future.

Note the small seam just to the right of the first column. Note: the cat is not dead; he's just lazy.

Fast forward to June and it was finally cured enough to be painted. Which is exactly what Susanna did when she came to town two weeks ago. We still need to cover those columns and finish the underside of the overhang, but we're starting to look more respectable!