While the ladies were brunching and celebrating my sister’s bridal shower this past weekend, Mike was busy working on the porch.

In the last update, Mike had begun stabilizing the porch. 

Over the weekend he finished stabilizing it, and began the framework for putting it back together!

You’ll also notice he killed all my hostas and boxwoods.  Just kidding, but that’s kind of what I thought when I came back from the bridal shower!  He moved them all to the side yard (something he tried to make me do, and I continually told him it would be fine to just work around – whoops!). 

He not only replaced the boards that had termite damage, he reinforced areas that weren’t properly supported, as well as beefed up the supports under the columns.  He also added some girders underneath for even more support.  This porch is going to outlast the house! 

He then added OSB as the base for the siding that we’re re-attaching. 

Monday, he had river stone delivered (the same stuff we’ve used on the side and behind the garage) and used it around the posts to act as a barrier between the dirt and building materials.  All the new wood added was all pressure-treated as well. 

Mike also outlined the new walkway and plant bed and removed the topsoil and started grading.  We’ll reuse the topsoil in the bed as well as fill in some low spots in the yard.  One of them being right where Mike threw all the topsoil.

This was very exciting because we are now able to see the path of the walkway and envision things in relation to it.  It’s been mostly abstract up until now, with phrases like “I want it to be winding” being thrown out when talking about ideas.

This week we plan to get some materials and layout the walkway for pouring concrete.  We’ve also ordered some of the material for the porch and hope to have that wrapped up in the next couple of weeks!  Our Annual Crawfish Boil is June 27th, so that’s our unofficial goal for getting as much of this project done, we’ll see!