1342 Linden Street Remodel: Outside Improvements

I'd like to be able to say that by changing the exterior appearance, I can change the neighborhood. But that's not likely to happen. I do like to set a good example though. And maybe one day down the road, the example will be taken on as a challenge by someone that lives nearby. They might say "I want my yard to look like THAT!" And hopefully for a good reason.

I finally got around to having the porch masonry repaired. It needed some TLC, which included new limeston wall caps, some tuckpointing and some areas simply needed to be rebuilt. If you ever have any masonry work done on your house, please follow this simple advice: Match the darn mortar color, even if it's only in the same color range.

I wouldn't recommend the guys who did this work to anyone, it was very average. But it certainly does the job on dressing up the porch back to its original look.

Then there's the shed. I put the posts in the ground about 9 months before I got around to building it, so it looked like I was signaling to aliens for a while during the Winter. But the custom design worked out well. Still no pictures of the finished product yet. It was completed in August 2006.

Actually, the shed came before the deck, but there are more deck pictures, so here goes. I love building decks. I had to rent an auger to drill the piers because the dirt was so incredibly hard. But I didn't realize until it was too late that you really need to pre-water the holes about 24 hours before drilling to make the deep, dense soil softer. Especially in the dead of summer. Adam (my brother) helped me set the main posts.

Once the posts were set, I began framing the deck joists. A ledger had already been lag screwed in to the house framing to support the house side. We were finally able to to use that foresight for good.

Completing the deck included a lattice screen wall that was installed to accept viney plantings and a railing. For the railing ballusters I bought relatively expensive powder-coated aluminum pre-formed ballusters. They're available at Lowe's and the other home improvement stores I'm sure and dress up what would've probably been 2 x 2 treated wood chamfered at the top and bottom. But at $5 a piece -- well I only needed five boxes.