Throw Me Some Bead(board), Mister!

Alright, this is not a 'Moms Gone Wild' Mardi Gras post or anything- so don't anybody get the wrong idea here! (Ironic the bead reference though, as the hubs and I honeymooned at The Orleans in Las Vegas and actually have several strands of beads around the house as a fond memory of the time we spent there- and no, we didn't do anything 'special to get them'! You can easily buy them in the gift shop!) Regardless, I'm not passing out treats in this post... at least not in that regard! What I will bare though, is the awesomeness that is our new porch ceiling and the trials and tribulations (of course!) that we went through to achieve it.

Rot is GROSS!

If y'all remember my last post, you're very familiar with the hot mess of a house that we bought ~2 years ago. It was a foreclosure, so we got an awesome deal- but it has required SO MUCH WORK and we're still not done with it yet. {read: still a hot mess} Of late, we've abandoned the inside for the outside as we just can't take it anymore! The catalyst for this great migration to the outdoors was some wood rot that needed repairing and once that was fixed... well, it just kind of snowballed! *grins sheepishly*

We started out by replacing the front porch columns (they look sooooooooo much better!) and while researching the column wrap kits, I ran across this amazing vinyl soffit stuff that looks just like beadboard! This was an awesome find in so many ways:

1.  In our initial repairs of the house we had to replace quite a bit of vinyl siding and Tim got really good at putting it up so I knew he could easily do this
2. It is super cheap and I was totally able to find it local (and in stock!) so no waiting for shipping or paying freight charges!
3. It completely covers our horrible plywood ceiling on our front porch which was that rotten butter yellow color and had all the rusty nails showing (GROSS!)

   

   Horrible plywood ceiling- YUCK!

4. It goes perfectly with our modern cottage/vintage/urban/farmhouse design aesthetic!

I WAS SOLD!!

Of course, we had to go about it all the wrong way in the beginning! We started out by pulling off the plywood and realizing that our studs were not 16" on center as they should have been (our house isn't THAT old- that rule was in place in 1980 when it was built!). Then, in reading the instructions for the beadboard, we saw it needed to be nailed every 8-10" to prevent bowing, so we had to reinforce between the studs with 2x4's. {Commence unhappy hubby here}. This added an extra day (literally!) to our project, just to cut 50+ 14.5" 2x4's and toenail them between the studs to add the extra support. But that sure beat sitting out there one evening and having the beadboard fall on your head or bow like sailcloth! 

Extra supports between studs

In pulling down the plywood, a lot of our attic insulation fell out all over us (ITCHY!!!!!) and made a mess of our porch and garden. We had to make use of a roll of Lowe's housewrap and some Wild West action with a staple gun to keep the attic and its contents separate from us while we worked.

The insulation that stayed where it was supposed to!

Then, we had to fight the battle that is j-channel. I swear we needed to have engineering degrees from Georgia Tech to properly use this stuff- it was rough! By the end though, we got fairly adept at it. Again, we had several areas where we had to reinforce wood so we had somewhere to nail the j-channel. But once we jumped that hurdle, it all worked out well. Corners were probably more difficult than they should have been (sometimes we tend to overthink things) but we did the best we could and it turned out good enough for us.

It's really coming along!

Tim decided to run power out to each 'wing' of our front porch (it makes a 'T' of sorts), so that we could have a place to plug in holiday lights, fans, and/or other various and sundry items. While he was up in the ceiling messing with the power, he had to rework the main light box where the front porch light goes, because it was done all wrong. We were finally able to hang up the porch light we have had since we moved in- such an exciting day!

TA-DA!

All told, it took us about 1-1.5 months to get it all done, mainly because we could only work on weekends and holidays when Tim was off work. And even though there were a ton of learning curves, we couldn't be happier with the end result... BEAUTIFUL!

Still need to paint the trim and do some caulking- but overall it's GREAT!

Until next time... give DIY a try!

I'm Linking Up With These Great Parties!

• Between Naps on the Porch (Metamorphosis Mondays)
• Boogieboard Cottage (Masterpiece Mondays)
• Alderberry Hill (Make the Scene Monday)
• I Should Be Mopping the Floor (Mop It Up Mondays)
• Keeping it Simple Crafts (Motivate Me Monday)
• Lines Across (Monday Funday)
• The Dedicated House (Make It Pretty Monday)
• Serendipity and Spice (Manic Mondays)