We (but mostly The Wandering Monk) finished the screen porch framing except for the part above the door. That, and hopefully a fair bit of siding, should be done tomorrow.
Well, barring the standard unpleasant discoveries, courtesy of Ye Olde Wreck’s original builders, Jim Beam and Jack Daniels.
Fortunately we’ve reached the point where those discoveries are of the “how the heck do we fit those crazy angles together” variety rather than the “why didn’t I just tear the house down when I had the chance?” sort. But there sure are a lot of those little angles that don’t like each other very much.
Still. Lots of progress and I can’t wait to see siding go up.
But it was a strange day. Weatherpersons had been warning we might get temperatures near 100 — unusual for these parts. We definitely got a sweaty-hot day, but as it happened we also got smoke from wildfires.
The morning came up hazy. By afternoon a perceptible scrim of smoke hung between houses on the street. As it gathered, it became eyeball-watering and pungent. Yet the wildfires are hundreds of miles away.
Just a freak of weather conditions that we should be under this gray pall. Here in the coastal northwet the only other time I’ve seen smoky skies was when a small fire was burning only a few miles distant. Smoky skies don’t happen to people who live under a nearly constant ocean breeze. Except today.
We were lucky. The haze pushed the temperatures down to uncomfortable-but-safe levels for outdoor work. A friend in another part of the country had it worse. With multiple wildfires within miles of her home, she and her husband loaded up their go-bags. I believe they already departed — for I-don’t-know-where. Good fortune to you, K., if you’re reading this.
I’m sure she’s not alone. My best to you all who are in danger.
A curiosity question: In the picture the screen porch floor looks like wood. Wind will drive rain through screening; what’s the plan for protecting the floor and preventing water damage?
Claire, it sounds like the prevailing winds are normally out of the west where you live and yesterday, you got winds out of the east that drives the temperature up and smoke from the wildfires into your region. When I was stationed on the California Central Coast, occasionally we would get winds from the desert inland out of the east that are called the Santa Ana winds and they would do the same and drive the temperatures up into the 90s.
Jim Beam and Jack Daniels? A college friend was instructed by his parents to paint their vacation cottage. He and three buddies set to work, but naturally needed some refreshment. Quality decayed with time, and the fourth wall was mostly Manischewitz.
Wildfires in the PNW. I didn’t know that could even happen.
Don’t tell Al Gore, he’ll claim credit and demand money.
> Wildfires in the PNW. I didn’t know that could even happen.
The ones that immediately come to mind are collectively referred to as the Tillamook Burn. Used to go through there sometimes, just to look.
“Wildfires in the PNW. I didn’t know that could even happen.”
Yeah, other than the Tillamook Burn or fires east of the mountains, it’s rare (and the Tillamook Burn was long before most of us were born).
Anyhow, technically these fires aren’t in the northwest. They’re in the southwest — of Canada. Does that count?
We have over 2000 acres burning since July 23th northeast of Brookings. The area is so inaccessible that the strategy is to have it contained by mid October, and let the rain put it out.
Luckily, we’ve been having favorable winds and have been out of the smoke stream.
Arthur Murray — I’m sorry, your message went into spam and I missed it.
There is a plan. First, the floor is slightly sloped so water can run off. Then, temporarily, I’ll paint it with several coats of porch paint and polyurethane varnish. Eventually, I’ll add underlayment and sheet-vinyl flooring, and there will be small holes for any water to drain out.
Knowing you, I suspect you’ve got some helpful ideas. So by all means, I’d love to hear them.
Protecting from moisture above (rain) isn’t rocket surgery; sounds like you’ve got it pretty much covered. I might suggest, though, that a “friction enhancer” be added to the surface; way back when, houses in my area frequently had their concrete porches painted with a very tough gloss enamel porch paint, usually in battleship gray. Looked great, lasted forever, but when it got wet it was like greased glass, and the smarter homeowners mixed some coarse sand in the paint to provide wet traction. Adding a traction enhancer to a vinyl floor may prove difficult.
There is available self-leveling concrete that might be worth considering. It’s used to level existing concrete floors with dips and depressions, and gets poured on at about the consistency of tomato soup, just enough thickness to seek its own level and eliminate dips and depressions. One version of it is used over flooring material of all types to cover radiant heat floor piping and goes on about 2″ – 2 1/2″ thick. It’s not quite as liquid as the self-leveling concrete, but still self levels, and forms a solid enough surface to accept whatever finish flooring one wants. It would require some sort of temporary curb to retain it in place while it sets, but that’s simple. None of the self-leveling concrete uses aggregate, but gets its strength from strands of fiberglas incorporated in the concrete during mixing.
That slightly thicker stuff offers another option – as it sets, just before it goes “too hard to work,” it can be stamped with pattern sheets to resemble a natural stone floor. I’ve seen such floors with dye added to the concrete during mixing and then patterned (or, if the concrete folks are really good, hand-spread powdered dye over lightly-dyed concrete mix immediately before stamping to provide some irregularity to the coloring to more closely resemble natural stone), and after a concrete sealer goes down to provide a non-absorbent surface and add some shine, until you look closely it’s indistinguishable from real stone.
The other moisture problem may come from below: moisture evaporating from the soil below the house and getting absorbed by the wood flooring material (which should not be significantly different from the other wood floors in the house, so if there’s no problem with them there shouldn’t be with the porch). Whatever sealing layer goes on top of the floor will also serve to trap moisture in it. Short of replacing the wood floor with moisture-impervious material (metal, stone, concrete) there’s no solution other than good drainage, lots of venting and carrying water away from the house with gutters and downspouts. The biggest issue will be adequately sealing the edges of the flooring – exposed end grain absorbs moisture more easily than the sanded flat surface.
It’s probably too late to seal the underside of the flooring material, and keep it sealed – there’s a house sitting on it – but that’s also an option.
I take it your part of Cascadia has a high humidity, so 100 degrees there would be like it is here-something similar to being inside of a rice steamer. I once watch the two Buds-Weiser and Lite-jockey a mobile home into place with a tractor way undersized for the job.. Considering the amount of beer they’d had, they didn’t do too bad..in the words of a coworker, they were drunktional funks.
Arthur Murray — Thank you for your always-helpful construction advice. Yikes, I failed even to consider that the floor would get slippery. Perhaps I’ll forego the vinyl and just put that texturing sand into the floor paint. (I already have half a bag of it from a porch project on the old flatlands house.)
Scott — Rice steamer! Yeah, that was it. We’re back to normal now: socked-in mornings, pleasantly warm afternoons, but enough humidity to breed global populations of mosquitoes.
Drunktational funks? I’ll have to remember that.