The Masters House

Well the weather is turning nice here in Central Texas and so the kids are wanting to be outside more and more. They are still small so letting them go play in the backyard by themselves is out of the question right now. As you can imagine they have far more energy then we do so hanging out with them outside can be a bit much.

I had thrown around the idea of adding railing around our back porch last year and my wife had thought that it was a good idea.

I mention it again a few weeks back and my wife encouraged me to get it done for the kids - so I did this past weekend.

The whole project cost right around $200 for the materials. and took me about 10 hours over 3 days to complete. One of the most time consuming tasks was making the banisters. I could have easily bought them for around $1.50 a piece but ended up making them myself for around $0.40 each.

What I did was got a 2×4 that was 104″ and cut it first in 3 pieces with my chop saw and then took those 3 pieces and ripped them on my table saw making 6 - 2×2 pieces of wood @ 34 1/2 long. I then cut the ends of these at a 45 degree angle and then predrilled holes at either end so the wood would not spit when screwing it in.

Speaking of screws I used screws throughout the entire project as I feel that they will keep things together a whole lot better over time.

Another item that I did was to make them modular for future expansion. See eventually I want to expand the porch out on either side about 15 feet and the make those section semi-covered. The railings that I made are easily removed my unscrewing 8 screws. I them can move them to the new side and screw them back in place.

Another item that we added was foam tiles to cover the cement. This way when the kids are playing we do not have to worry about them falling on the cement. We ended up buying 6 packages of squares @ $18 each for a total of 24 squares. I cut them around the different posts and banisters so that they fit better and would not move around.

At this point the the porch is functional and the kids love to be out there. The only things that we still want to do is stain the wood so it matches the fence, put a screen door on the back door, and install a ceiling fan.

It was a fun project and it really felt good to do something for the kids with all of those tools that I have been collecting in the garage.

You can view pictures here or click any of the pictures above.  

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Butler House, PorchRailing, Projects . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.