A Post About Posts

When we moved in the exterior trim on our house was all the same faded blue- the doors, shutters, and the porch posts. And it all stayed the same until this spring when we finally painted the front door and updated the posts. The paint on the posts was particularly bad. I don't know if they were ever primed but they were flaking and peeling particularly the sides with the most sun exposure. I don't really have any before pictures but here is one that just so happens to be during one of our few snow storms. So I was really taking a picture of the snow not the porch...

You can't see any peeling paint but I just like this picture of our house in the snow so I am including it...

This porch project went through a couple phases and had its ups and downs. It first started with me trying to scrape the paint off so that we could repaint the original posts. I don't know if I have mentioned but I am terrible at sanding/scraping. Mostly because I give up too quickly. So I scraped the posts and then even primed one of them before my husband saw it. And it was very rough and bumpy. Not a good look. You can see in the below picture that one of the posts is white...It looks good from a distance.

Since the scraping didn't work that well I was then going to try power sanding. That was when my husband thought to use one of the lead paint tests that we had bought for an old antique door. So we did the quick test and found...that the blue paint was lead paint. So we really shouldn't be sanding it and creating dust that would not be good for us or the nearby plants. 

I like this picture because you can see my plants from last year growing back in :)

So the next thing that I tried was stripping the paint off with my gel Citristrip. That was an epic fail. It was a lot of surface to cover and I wasted a lot of the stripper. After applying it and then spending only about 15 minutes trying to scrape the paint off I gave up. It was going to take forever and I didn't like the original posts that much to work this hard to save them. That was when I suggested to Pascal that we cover (and thus seal up) the lead paint with wood which would also make the porch posts look sturdy, chunky, and modern. Although this option would cost more I thought it would be a big improvement to the porch. And would not require me to get rid of all the old paint. It would however require work from Pascal but he was on board after some convincing.

The post is white-ish from the dried stripping gel.

I took off these decorative pieces that were really not my style anyways. 

 We measured our posts and went to the hardware store. We needed 1x6x8's and 1x4x8's (two sides of the posts with 1x4's and two sides with 1x6's). We ended up buying the pressure treated wood. We looked at the pre-primed wood but that was significantly more expensive. We spent less than a $100 on the 16 pieces of wood. Now that we have already done it I would recommend spending the extra money on the pre-primed wood. It gives you a clean smooth surface and saves you the step of priming. Our posts are not completely smooth.

Pascal had to cut the wood some to fit with his table saw and then put up the 1x4's first. He used his brad nail gun to attach them and also added a couple of screws.

The 1x6's were added on the front and backs of the posts overlapping the 1x4's. So you can see lines between the two pieces of wood from the side but not the front and back. 

That is our old down spout that we also replaced

 First post done! Pascal works hard....goes to work and then comes home to work some more.

After putting up all the wood the next steps were priming, painting, and caulking all the cracks and gaps. Finished pictures coming next!