Park View, D.C.

The porch before work began in 2009

I’m sure this it typical, but sometimes I’m both amazed and disgusted with how long a home improvement project can take. My latest example is the repair and replacement of the balustrade above my upper porch. This project began at the end of July 2009 and was only just completed in October of this year — which I guess makes that a two-year and three-month project.

In fairness, a lot of other projects cropped up with higher priorities, but still, I had intended this to be an easy win in the struggle between man and house.

The reality is that it should have taken about a week of full-time, dedicated work … but as with most things life got in the way and my desire to be as accurate to the original balustrade made the project more complicated than it otherwise would have been. Case in point, my insistence in including the fretwork detail in the middle of each section.

I am definitely pleased with the final product, which you can see below. More importantly, the front of the house is now essentially done before another season of cold weather.

Section of balustrade mid-project, showing detail of fretwork section

House in late October with finished balustrade

This entry was posted on November 10, 2011 at 7:01 am and is filed under Restoration repair and maintenance. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: home improvement, restoration & renovation