Six Degrees of Renovation

Anyone who has ever done a sizable reno knows what the title is about: that horrible realization that you can't finish one project because it interferes with another project that you weren't planning on starting for another year.

So goes the battle on our front porch, which actually started out as the project to refinish Kayleigh's room. Kayleigh's room is over the front porch. The posts on the front porch had let the front of the house sag by 2", so the house needed to be jacked up and blocks put between the posts and the house. But wait, the wood under the porch wasn't strong enough to take the weight of the jack, so the front walls under the front porch had to be rebuilt, which meant pulling off all the siding. There's no point in putting the old siding back on afterwards when we want to put new cedar siding on to match the house's original siding, but we can't do the new siding until the porch has its final railing (it will be a solid railing with siding on it). But that means replacing the posts. It also means putting down the new plywood deck with fibreglass coating, since the fibreglass must go down before the siding goes on.

Still with me? Well, wait, because there's more. The fibreglass must lap up the walls to ensure a proper seal, but the front entrance door is being replaced. Currently there are two doors and we want a large single door with sidelites. We bought the door (a beautiful 7' high solid fir door) last fall in anticipation of eventually replacing it. Since the new door will have a different opening size, the new opening must be framed before the deck can be done!

But there's still more! Inside, a wall divides the two existing doors. That wall must come down because the new door will be right in the middle of the wall. But the wall holds up the altered staircase up to the second floor, so the staircase must also be altered. Aiiiggghhhh!

All of this because we wanted to finish Kayleigh's room in time for her birthday.