Lattices and porch posts and bricks, oh my!
Entry posted by rbytsdy
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I am having such fun working on this house! It's a bit organic, the process so far, in that I think of things I want to build and then I build them. And then I revise/undo them when it turns out that it doesn't fit. 
So I was googling for guidance on porch lattices, and came across this fellow: http://www.oldhouseguy.com/porch-skirting/. I don't know how much is orthodoxy and how much is his opinion, but his views on aesthetics made sense to me, so I decided to go with it. He wrote about how porch posts need to have at least a visual support underneath them or else the porch structure looks weak, and how the holes in lattice shouldn't be too big or small. I used his dimensions as a guide to make lattices out of matboard strips:
But before that, I had measured out the porch and decided what should be brick and what should be lattice, as well as putting the extension on the porch; since the extension was foamboard, I shimmed the original porch with matboard to make up the thickness.
Dryfitting the lattice, I installed the rest of the porch support that will be bricked over:
You can also see my floor supports (1/2" square dowel)-- that floor gets pretty saggy without it!
Anybody who has done eggcarton brick or stone knows what this is:
Here are my porch posts, made of matboard (with foamboard reinforcements inside them):
And here are some items that I got from http://www.miniaturesmarketplace.com/ with their free shipping coupon and a gift card (so it was free to me! ):
Reinforcing my porch posts with wooden dowel:
Oldhouseguy referenced above said that one should never rest one's lattice on the ground due to rot, so I put a layer of foamboard under the entire house perimeter so that I can lay a layer of brick.
I also worked on the porch steps. The steps and the top slabs of their sides will be finished in concrete, and the sides themselves will be bricked:
Getting started on the bricking; I will have to make more bricks to finish off the chimney and the porch posts. I will have to think about the porch posts; I don't like where that brick pattern is going... :nonono:
The lattice is still dry-fit into place, since I need to grout the bricks and paint underneath the porch before I glue em in.
The house isn't glued to the base yet because I have to figure out what I am doing with the wiring and drill holes accordingly.
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