After over a year of trying to get someone to redo our front porch flooring, we finally have carpenters banging on the front of our house. It’s a happy sound, even early in the morning. Finding good workers is a challenge, so we were glad to get our roofer to work on the porch, after one contractor disappeared on us last fall (after stringing us along for a couple of months) and a couple of others came in with quotes that were higher than we thought it ought to be. We try not to take the absolute lowest quote for house repairs, but we also don’t want to throw more money than needed into a job, especially if we don’t know what kind of work we’ll get. So we were thrilled when our roofer, who rebuilt the top of the porch when we had a metal roof put on it, was able to come and gave us a quote that was more within our budget.
Of course, they ran into some wood underneath that needed replacing — we were expecting that — but it turned out not to be as bad as we had feared. They’re using kiln dried treated pine flooring, so we’re confident it will last. We have our painter lined up to paint it when it’s ready, and will follow the manufacturer’s instructions to prime with oil-based primer and paint with a latest porch paint. Then we’ll have a porch that isn’t falling in and hasn’t been patched. It’s the (near) final stage in the painting project that we started last summer, and it will be great when it’s really finalized.
In the meantime, I’m still on the MUW webmaster search committee, still working on our line-up for the Welty Symposium, and still getting ready for our trip to Belgium, which will likely consume this blog in the coming weeks. Though the semester is officially over, it’s still a busy time!
Kendall Dunkelberg 