mjonis
01-17-05, 12:12 PM
Hi! Thank you in advance for any advice...
Our new-to-us 1920 home has a front porch that runs about 1/3 the width of the front of the house (the front of our living room is the other 2/3). The porch is covered by the front of the home's roof, but is not enclosed on two sides (the corner of the home). Directly beneath the porch is the front of our full-sized basement. Unfortunately, the front porch floor is made up of only wood floor boards (maybe 2" wide), with nothing underneath them. It seems that the course of time and a lack of paint maintenance on the porch floor have caused very small gaps to appear at various points between the boards. The floor joists in the basement show some small spots where they have been wet (from rain or snow coming down in just the right direction and going right through these small gaps). This doesn't seem like a huge problem yet, as the porch floor is very sturdy and the holes are very small, but we want to take care of it as soon as possible.
My question is in regards to our proposed course of action to repair this problem. My husband and I were going to pull up the floor boards, lay exterior grade plywood over the floor joists, and put down floor boards again, paint, etc.
1) Is there a better way to repair/replace this (the porch area is approximately 6'x8') than we have planned? Is there another step we should take to try and keep this from happening in the future?
2) Assuming we lay plywood and then flooring, the level of the porch floor would be raised from where it is now. How does this affect the threshold to the front door and how do we deal with that?
Thank you very much! I've learned so much from reading posts on this site, but haven't seen anything quite similar to this.
Our new-to-us 1920 home has a front porch that runs about 1/3 the width of the front of the house (the front of our living room is the other 2/3). The porch is covered by the front of the home's roof, but is not enclosed on two sides (the corner of the home). Directly beneath the porch is the front of our full-sized basement. Unfortunately, the front porch floor is made up of only wood floor boards (maybe 2" wide), with nothing underneath them. It seems that the course of time and a lack of paint maintenance on the porch floor have caused very small gaps to appear at various points between the boards. The floor joists in the basement show some small spots where they have been wet (from rain or snow coming down in just the right direction and going right through these small gaps). This doesn't seem like a huge problem yet, as the porch floor is very sturdy and the holes are very small, but we want to take care of it as soon as possible.
My question is in regards to our proposed course of action to repair this problem. My husband and I were going to pull up the floor boards, lay exterior grade plywood over the floor joists, and put down floor boards again, paint, etc.
1) Is there a better way to repair/replace this (the porch area is approximately 6'x8') than we have planned? Is there another step we should take to try and keep this from happening in the future?
2) Assuming we lay plywood and then flooring, the level of the porch floor would be raised from where it is now. How does this affect the threshold to the front door and how do we deal with that?
Thank you very much! I've learned so much from reading posts on this site, but haven't seen anything quite similar to this.