Julie Wants a Porch, Part 2

A Dance Floor and Rafter Tails

The flooring we decided to use on the porch is a KDAT 3 1/2" tongue and groove material that is very similar in looks to what you may have observed being used on the porches of older Victorian styled homes. The KDAT designation means the material is kiln dried after pressure treating. Being able to use material that is dry, yet treated for rot resistance will be a real advantage given that even though Julie's porch will have a generous overhang it will not be anywhere nearly the size overhang used on the older Victorian houses.

The flooring was available in 12 foot lengths so if we installed it with the length running from the house to the outside edge of the porch there would be no butt joints along the length. However the way the porch was framed would not work with this configuration so we had to install a layer of 3/4" pressure treated plywood in order to install the floor in this manner later in the process.

At this point we had a dance floor at the very least. We also added some Azek trim to further restrict access to the under side of the porch.

The following weekend the weather was not cooperative with working in the out of doors so we utilized this time to create one of the millwork features that would adorn and provide support for the overhang of the porch. This porch would feature exposed rafter tails that would support the overhang and create a nice visual feature and we needed 21 of them.

Luckily I had stored some left over pressure treated 2 x 12s and 2 x 10s under my shop for the last 6 years. (left over from house construction)This material had time to thoroughly air dry and was the perfect material for the rafter tails. The design required that we rip pieces to width and then joint and laminate them face to face. You can see a stack of the glued up and somewhat processed blanks in the picture below.

We made a template of the shape we wanted and used it to layout the blanks and rough the shape out on the bandsaw. We then used the template to guide a large flush trim router bit that would refine the shape.

Even though we still have a few more to make, the picture below shows the fruits of our labor for that weekend.

When we completed all 21 rafter tails we sanded the fuzzy areas and applied 2 good coats of an oil based primer, sanding between coats. There is a lot of end grain exposed on these rafter tails that would require extra protection in the elements and it was easy to apply paint when we could hold them in our hand.

In the next post we go vertical,

Ron

Quote
"I've found that not giving a damn about meaningless crap makes me a happier person"  Meredith Searcy