Last Day of Spring

It feels strange writing about this next project. Mostly because I've spent the last 7-8 months thinking about and planning it, and now that I'm done, I'm struggling to spend any more time on it. Oh, well, here we go...

The Portico
For the 11 years that I have lived in my current house, the back porch (which is also the basement walkout), has been just a slab of grey—or more recently white—concrete. We've been spending more and more time back there over the last few years and frankly, I've grown to dislike the austere slab of 'crete. So, with an idea and financial sign-off from the boss (that's the Mrs to those who don't know), I began to plan. And plan. And then plan some more. Then I bought the materials, ready to work. That was late fall of last year. In fact, we brought the materials into the basement, just outside the woodshop, on the last nice day of 2014. The next day, winter began.

So I spent the winter looking at the pile of lumber every time I walked by it on the way into the woodshop. "Hello, looming project," I would say, and then go work on something else. Eventually spring rolled around and I ran out of excuses and I got to work.

Built to last, this 3 piece portico features mortise and tenon joinery, plugged pocket screws and some tricky miter cuts. Made of cedar-tone treated pine and finished with an opaque deck stain—this thing just might outlast me.

Here's some build shots showing the mortises and the diamonds I cut into the shelf column sides.

 

And heres some shots of the assembled shelf columns.

Here's a few showing various stages, from cutting the roofing plywood down, to the hand-cut support stretchers (hand-cut because I chose to make them parallel to the roof—an angle not achievable on the miter saw. Silly me, right?)

And finally, here's the porch before and after. We've some lovely plants on the shelves now, but I don't have pics of that, so you'll just have to use your imagination.