Removing Scalloped Porch Trim & Fixing Porch Columns: a house log

We have been talking about streamlining (buh-bye scallop) and beefing up the porch (namely those columns) ever since we moved in back in 2010. And it is at last warming up sufficient for us to tackle an outdoor project after a long winter – seriously, we were still getting snow a few weeks ago.

Most of the ranches in our neighborhood either have chunky square columns or a more traditional colonial style. We prefer the former, but inherited the latter. Along with a curved scallop header that is not exactly our style either.

Our first house had an issue with a scalloped header too, which Sherry tackled back in 2008 (one of her most exhausting projects to date – which she recounts here). She ran into some challenges when some metal flashing did not want to give up the ghost – and thanks to the fact that she was not quite tall sufficient to make the task straightforward (she did this by herself as a surprise for me while I was at work one day). But we enjoyed the more updated, clean-lined look that it gave our first house. So it was at last time to get on it here…

Of course this porch is a whole new beast (no metal flashing, a lot more wood trim and stuff to deal with, and columns that we will be altering this time). So before we began hammering away at things, I ran a utility knife across the seams to “encourage” the paint the break in the right spot – not crack, peel or flake off in areas that we did not want it to. This is consistently a good idea before demoing surfaces that have been painted together – especially with plenty of thick layers of exterior paint.

I was fully prepared for our demo process to be exhausting, considering the horror stories that Sherry told me about her last attempt at scallops, so I was cautiously optimistic when a few whacks with a rubber mallet easily loosened the scalloped header while Sherry watched with bated breath.

Thankfully, once things were loose, we were able to swiftly pry that part of the curved scallop off with a crowbar.

Not too fairly looking yet, but at least the demo was not too bad:

The combo of not having metal flashing to contend with AND my height being available (along with 4 hands, which are consistently better than 2) helped things work in our favor for sure this time. Soon sufficient all of the scallops were gone and we were already feeling better about things. Now we simply had to put a new straight header (along with those boxed our columns) together.

We began off by nailing and gluing a plain pre-primed piece of 1 x 3″ pine where the scallops had been. Curvy header out. Crisp, straight header in.

That was the straightforward (slash boring) part. This is where the lively began – boxing out the columns.

Rather than go through the trouble of removing the existing columns, we chose to achieve our more modern, chunky square column look by simply “boxing” them in on all sides with some pre-primed pine boards – which is faster and easier (not to mention cheaper). Our columns were a few inches shy of 8 feet tall, so we had to trim each board first (thanks circular saw!).

Here you can see what one column looks like with two sides of the box brought in. Our columns were exactly as wide as a 1 x 6″ board (we will now pause to thank the home improvement gods for that excellent discovery) so it did not require any additional cutting besides trimming the length, as shown above.

We attached them with some heavy duty wood glue followed by a few 2″ nails into the bottom and top (where the new boards rested flat against the square part of the old columns). We also brought in a few screws to keep them extra secure for the long haul.

Since adding those two 1 x 6″ boards essentially made our columns wider, we had to use 1 x 8″ boards for the other two sides. That sounds confusing, but it made them end up as 8″ x 8″ squares since the sides of the boards overlapped (this quite rough Sherry-sketch should hopefully make sense of the overlapping concept that I am trying to explain).

Well, in fact they are around 7.5″ square since 8″ boards are never truly 8″ (they are more like 7.5″ wide). But you get the idea.

As for physically boxing the columns out, two things truly helped: our nail gun, and Sherry’s hands. Obviously the nail gun made things go faster and this whole project is ideally a two person job (although once we had things secured in a few places Sherry could step back and snap some fantastic photos like this one).

The process in fact went fairly fast, simply not fast sufficient for us to finish before Clara came home from her afternoon with Grammy & Tom Tom. So our progress got cut short a bit – but you can at least see where we are headed. Oh but see how the header looks a little thin compared to the newly boxed out columns? We have plans to beef that up under the roofline so it is pleasant and balanced. Stay tuned…

So here is our remaining to-do list:

• get that last column boxed in
• add a chunkier header piece to visually balance the columns
• get all of those seams caulked (do not want any moisture getting in there)
• paint everything so it is seamless

So we hope to be back with some true before and afters once we knock those things out. In the meantime, you can also check out this little loot-related craft that Sherry whipped up for Clara (and Will Bower) over on the house Life.

Anyone else moving on to outdoor projects at last? What is on your spring Hands-on agenda? New flower beds? A patio upgrade? Mulch galore? Or are you making fake money? Be careful that it is not too realistic (do not wanna end up in trouble…).