One of the first things I noticed when starting to plan what to do with the house was an issue with this pillar here on the front porch:
Hard to see right? Well, it became apparent when someone (no names mentioned) kicked the pillar by mistake.
Uh oh! Clearly this is rot. I was worried that the rot didn’t go all the way through to the pillar because that is partly holding up the porch’s roof!
Basically rotted wood comes away like sponge. There’s no point in trying to preserve it, better to get all the rot out. For my troubles, I had a spider escape from the wood. I was not pleased.
Did I get it all? Maybe if I just give it one extra scrape…
Oh bugger, well the good news is the actual structural timber is fine, thank goodness. Looks like the moulding has just succumbed to rot. I removed those vintage looking nails and managed to find the exact same mould pattern at Bunnings.
To get the nice clean 45 degree mitre joins on this, I would need to invest in yet another tool, a mitre saw!
Problem is, I don’t have the patience to read the user manual, and Tim doesn’t trust me with sharp spinny objects unless someone reads the manual so….
My poor long-suffering boyfriend was on mitre saw duty.
Meanwhile, I liberally applied wood hardener to the structural timber, just to ensure the rot didn’t make it any further into the hard wood. Just my luck though it started raining. Hot tip: don’t cover your wood in plastic like this, it’s just doing to get soggy anyway.
Once dry, I primed everything and used nail & glue to create 3 sides of the box for the moulding to fit over the column.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it didn’t have to be all that perfect. I slathered the whole thing in Selly’s “no more gaps” to prevent water getting in again.
Like all good workmen, I don’t actually have a photo of the finished product, but trust me, it looks great, you can hardly notice it!
Here’s a better way to protect against rain. You want a bit of airflow around the wood so that it can dry properly.