ArizonaRanch

  Stairs for the Littlehouse Porch by rdpecken on Oct.15, 2012, under Uncategorized Well, there’s not much to show for progress over the past several months.  With all of the travel and family responsibilities lately, we did not get back up to the ranch during July, August or September. We finally made it up there over October Break period. But even this was a shortened trip.  We got the main part of the stairs to the front porch built  We still need to complete the railings and the rest of the porch railings and posts. Porch Stairs Started Because we had some things to accomplish in the Valley, we did not make it up to the Ranch until 5:00pm on Monday. We spent the rest of the daylight hours setting up camp. The next morning, we got up and had breakfast, then started on the stringer design.  Our neighbors from up the road stopped by on their way out, and we visited for a while. The stringer design was very difficult for me.  I’m jus...

  Building the Littlehouse Porch by rdpecken on May.28, 2011, under porch We came up in April to build the deck, this would serve as the floor for the planned covered/screened porch on the Littlehouse. It was a pretty heavy load, but here it is unloaded, ready to start. Lumber to start We decided that since this was to be a covered porch, we didn’t need to go with the much more expensive engineered deck wood that has become popular.  Instead, we would build the beams and joists from normal douglas fir, and use redwood for the deck boards.  Since they will have a roof and screened walls around them, we don’t expect to have to do a lot of maintenance to them. So the first thing to do was to square up the porch beams with the rest of the house.  We ran a string line along the two beams under the house, and extended it out to the porch area.  That should be pretty close to square.  We don’t need to be exact, since with beams are 6″ long...