Back Porch Rehab '24: The Megapost

Porches

Eight Years Later, We Finally Finished What We Started

Started: Sort of 2016

Finished: Finally, 2024
Project: Back Porch Exterior Rehab

If you've spent any amount of time here at House 173, you already know there are projects...and then there are projects.

There are those wonderful little Saturday-morning jobs where I wander into the workshop, cut up three pieces of scrap wood, use approximately nine more tools than necessary, and emerge two hours later with something useful.

And then there are projects like this one.

Technically, the Back Porch Rehab of 2024 took a good portion of one summer.

Technically.

In reality, it took about eight years.

That's because the seeds of this project were planted way back in 2016 when we put the Flagstone siding on other portions of House 173. We actually bought enough siding to finish the lower walls of the back porch at the same time.

And then we didn't.

The extra siding went underneath the porch for safekeeping. We painted the existing cedar shingles a matching gray and told ourselves we'd finish it the following spring.

Then another spring came.

And another.

And another.

Eventually, you have to stop calling something temporary.

So, eight years later, 2024 became the year.

Let's take one last look at the whole project.

The Back Porch Rehab '24 Original Posts
∙ Part 1: Teardown
∙ Part 2:  Building a New Window Sill
∙ Part 3:  Siding the South Wall
∙ Part 4:  The East Wall Surprise
∙ Part 5:  Building the East Wall Window Sill
∙ Part 6:  Siding the East Wall
∙ Part 7:  Giving the Old Window Trim Another Go
∙ Part 8:  Wrapping it Up! 
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Check out 2011's Shingling the Back Porch Part 1 & Part 2

Way Back in 1997

Before getting into 2024, we have to go back to where so many House 173 stories begin.  When we bought the ol' place, the exterior was almost entirely white.

And I mean white.

White house. White porch. White trim.

It had probably looked pretty crisp at one time, but by 1997 things were getting tired.

Of course, we didn't know then how many times we'd change our minds about the exterior.

In 2010 we replaced the back porch windows. Then in 2011 I covered the lower exterior walls with cedar shingles. At the time we were moving toward a white-and-brown Adirondack-ish look for the house.

And we liked it.

Until we didn't.

Then came 2016.

We started moving House 173 in an entirely different direction, using CertainTeed shingle-style vinyl siding in Flagstone.

It's a funny color. In shade it can look like a very dark gray, but sunlight brings out a definite blue.

We loved it.

The plan was always to carry that siding onto the back porch.  We even had the material.

Instead, I painted the cedar shingles Elephant Gray...

...which was a pretty darn good match, and essentially said:

I'll get to it.

Eight years later...

I got to it.

Part 1: Teardown

The first step was also the easiest.

Everything had to come off.

I had been looking at those cedar shingles for 13 years, so I expected removal to be a much bigger production than it actually was.

It wasn't.

Pry bar. Hammer. Drill driver.

Twenty minutes or so on one wall...

and maybe half an hour on the other.

Done.

And because this is House 173, obviously I didn't throw away all the shingles.

Perfectly usable cedar?

Are you kidding?

Some of them got stacked away for some future project that does not exist.

Yet.

That old siding had done its job since 2011, but removing it finally exposed what I already knew was going to become the real story of this project:

the window sills.

Part 2: Building the South Wall Window Sill

The south-wall sill had always bothered me.

When I installed the cedar shingles back in 2011, the sill treatment was one of those this-is-good-enough-for-now solutions.

Which would have been entirely defensible had “for now” not lasted thirteen years.

Once the shingles came off, the problem became clearer. 

The sheathing projected beyond the windows by somewhere between roughly half an inch and three-quarters of an inch.

There wasn't an off-the-shelf piece of trim that was going to magically make that disappear.

So I made one.

This was one of those projects that looks ridiculously simple once it's finished.

It's a board.

How hard can a board be?

Well...

It needed an outward slope so rainwater would run away from the house.

It needed a drip groove underneath to interrupt water trying to creep back toward the wall.

It needed a rabbet so it could bridge that awkward transition between the wall and the window.

And all of that required measuring.  Which meant geometry.  And as you know, House 173 and geometry have never had what you might call a warm relationship.

Naturally, after carefully measuring everything several times, I managed to cut the sill about an inch and a quarter too short.

There may have been language.

Fortunately, I still had the piece I'd cut off.  Out came the Titebond III, a screw and some determination.  Once sanded, filled and primed, you'd never know.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Part 3: The South Wall Finally Gets Sided

With the sill repaired and ready, it could finally go onto the house.  The next decision involved the lower trim.

The old bottom board had been pressure-treated wood and honestly hadn't done badly at all. But this area spends a good portion of every Upstate New York winter sitting next to snow, slush and rain splash.

So this time I went with PVC.

It doesn't rot.

It doesn't care much about snow.

And conveniently enough, it's already white.

Then came something I'd been waiting eight years to see.

The Flagstone siding finally started going up.

The access opening beneath the porch complicated the first several rows, and—as is pretty standard around here... a job a professional might have finished before lunch consumed a good portion of our day.

But nobody was timing us.

And when the last piece went up...

Damn!

This was starting to look like we knew what we were doing.

Part 4: The East Wall - The Thing I'd Been Dreading 

Then came the east wall. This was the one I'd spent years thinking about.

For reasons known only to my anxiety, I'd imagined all kinds of horrors hiding underneath the old sill.

Rot.
Complex framing.
Awkward cuts.

Maybe I'd have to use a reciprocating saw right next to the windows and somehow avoid turning the whole thing into an expensive lesson.

I'd mentally engineered solutions for problems I hadn't even uncovered yet.

Finally, I tore off the old PVC trim and peeled away the aluminum covering.

Point of no return.

And underneath all that?

A 1x3.

That's it.

A pressure-treated board held on with screws.

Years of worrying.

A handful of screws.

About three minutes.

There is probably a lesson in there somewhere.

I'm fairly certain I won't learn it.

Part 5: Making the East Wall Window Sill

The east-wall sill was another matter entirely.

This sucker was long.

Long enough that I couldn't make it from one ordinary 2x4.

So instead of digging through a pile of big-box lumber looking for the board shaped least like a banana, I went to an actual lumberyard and bought two beautiful, straight pieces.

My original plan was to join them with dowels.

Transfer points.
Careful measurements.
Everything clamped.
Everything marked.
Everything drilled.

And...

Nothing lined up.

$%&@!÷# geometry.

I abandoned that approach and moved on.

Then, after another round of careful measuring, I managed to cut away a strip of wood that didn't need to be removed at all.

Different mistake.

Same project.

Fortunately, I had saved the piece.

Back on it went.

I even filled the table-saw kerf with little cedar shims cut from the old shingles we'd just removed.

See?

I told you there was a reason to save stuff.

Once the repair was planed flat, the two boards were joined using exterior glue, opposing pocket screws and additional fasteners.

Was it elegant furniture joinery?

Nope.

Did it become one very long, solid sill?

Yep.

Before it went onto the wall, we also added flashing tape over seams and gaps beneath the windows.

Then came installation.

A support cleat went onto the wall. The sill went into position. We checked, adjusted and checked again.

And despite the far-right window sitting about half an inch higher than the others for reasons that I am certain made perfect sense to me back around 2009 or 2010, we got the whole thing looking right.

After years of worrying about that wall, seeing a proper sill in place was ridiculously satisfying.

Part 6: Siding the East Wall

Now came the part that would actually make the porch look finished.

First, the heavy back steps had to move out of the way.
Then we had to establish the starter strip.

That sounds like a small detail.

It wasn't.

The new courses had to line up visually with the finished south wall while also staying level across an old wall on a house built in 1927.

Square, plumb and level are more like philosophical aspirations around here.

So we took our time.

Once that first course was right, though, things moved much more smoothly.

There were dips.

There were shims.

There was improvisation.

There always is.

Gradually, the wall disappeared behind the Flagstone siding we'd bought eight years earlier.

Then the last course went up.

Finally.

At the bottom I added a white band board, matching the trim treatment elsewhere on the house.

It's a small thing, but it gives the dark siding a visual stopping point and ties it back into the white corners and window trim.

Little detail.
Big difference.

Part 7: Reusing the Old Window Trim

At this point we were finally down to the window trim.

My first thought?  Buy new PVC.  Then I looked at the old boards and there really wasn't anything wrong with them.

They weren't rotten.
They weren't cracked.
They weren't structurally compromised.

They were just dirty, a little tired, and no longer fit the revised sill configuration.

Well hell.

I can work with that.

The pieces got scrubbed with soap and water, followed by Simple Green.

Then came measuring.

And naturally, although the windows themselves are the same size, the trim openings weren't.

Because old house.

Geometry.

Leave me alone.

A couple pieces also needed to become longer, which is not generally a quality one associates with boards after they've already been cut.

So I added small pieces of scrap PVC to extend them.

Once everything was fitted, I cut the bottoms to match the slope of the new sills, lightly sanded the pieces to clean and degloss them, and put them back where they belonged.

And suddenly...

it looked finished.

Not remodeled.
Not repaired.

Finished.

That's different.

Part 8: Caulk, Paint and Finally Done

Of course, “finished” is one of those words I tend to use prematurely.

Because once the trim was up, there was still caulking.

And painting.

And all the little details that turn a collection of separate pieces into something that looks like it actually belongs together.  The funny thing is, I used to hate both caulking and painting.

I mean really hate them.

They were just annoying things standing between me and the end of a project.

But after nearly three decades of working on a 99-year-old house, I've done enough of both that somewhere along the way they stopped feeling difficult.

Maybe even a little relaxing.

Who knew?

And This Is Why We Caulk

When I installed the back porch windows years earlier and put the exterior trim on, I never caulked around them.

I intended to.

Of course I intended to.

And then...

you know.

I hadn't really appreciated just how unfinished those little gaps made the windows look until I started filling them.

Once the bead went in and the joints disappeared, the trim suddenly looked like one complete frame rather than separate boards nailed around an opening.

For the job I used DAP Dynaflex, a caulking gun, rags, water, and an old painter's tool I found in a parking lot years ago.

Naturally, I own a newer painter's tool.

 

Naturally, I use the old beat-up one instead.

Maybe there's something about getting older that makes you partial to tools that prove old things can still be useful.

Or maybe I just like the thing.  Either way, it got another workout.

Getting to the Windows

Even something as simple as caulking managed to require a little problem-solving.

The concrete near part of the wall sits proud of the surrounding soil, which made the ladder awkward to position.

So out came a couple bricks and a cedar shim liberated from one of the old shakes.

Yes.

More proof that we were right to save them.

Painting the PVC Trim

Then came paint.

I'd done a good bit of research on painting PVC and ultimately went to the local Sherwin-Williams for advice.

They recommended Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel.

Good enough for me.

Then came the great mystery of white paint.  You'd think white was white.

Oh no.

There are approximately nine million versions of white, all subtly different enough to make a grown man stand in front of a paint-chip wall questioning every decision he's ever made.

I went with Pure White.

Which, naturally, isn't actually the whitest white.

Whatever.

For sheen, I chose semi-gloss.

I'd learned my lesson elsewhere around 173 that flatter exterior trim can pick up dirt and be a pain to clean.

Semi-gloss gives the trim enough sheen to stand out against the dark siding, but more importantly, it should be easier to keep clean.

And after a couple hours of caulking and another hour or so painting...

we were done.

Actually done.

The Back Porch Exterior Is Finally Complete

After spending much of the summer dodging rain, heat, humidity and the occasional self-inflicted woodworking problem, the back porch was finished.

A professional probably could have done the whole thing in a weekend.

Maybe.

But that's not how things roll here at 173.

No rush.

We'll get there.

The cedar shakes are gone.  The old temporary sill arrangements are gone.  The new sills actually look like they belong there.  The Flagstone siding finally matches the rest of the house.  The window trim has been cleaned, modified, reused, caulked and painted.

And the whole porch exterior now looks like it belongs to the same House 173 we see from the street.

None of the individual pieces was especially spectacular.

But together?

Big difference.

Before and After

This is probably the best way to appreciate the whole project.  On the left below is the look back in 1997 when we bought 173.  On the right is the 2011 version.

And now!

From a distance, it isn't a dramatic “we tore the house apart and rebuilt it” transformation.

And that's actually what I like about it.

The porch doesn't look new... it looks finished.

Like somebody cared enough to take care of the odd transitions, rebuild the bad sills, line up the siding, reuse what could be reused, and finally seal and paint everything properly.

That's what I wanted.

Eight Years in the Making

One of the funny things about living in the same house this long is that projects begin to overlap eras.

The back porch windows belonged to one period.
The cedar shingles belonged to another.
The Flagstone siding came from another chapter altogether.

Some of the material finally installed in 2024 had been sitting underneath the porch since 2016 waiting for me to get around to using it.

And somehow all those different layers finally came together.

I also like that we didn't simply rip everything out and buy everything new.

The old PVC trim got another life.
The leftover siding finally fulfilled its destiny.
Some of the cedar shakes became shims.

The rest are stored away because apparently I've learned absolutely nothing about keeping scrap material.

But that's okay.

House 173 has never really been about making everything new.

It's about taking care of what we have.
Repairing things.
Changing things.

Occasionally correcting something I did myself thirteen years earlier.

And slowly making the place ours.

What I'd Do Differently

Oh, this one's easy.

I'D HAVE FINISHED IT IN 2016!

There.

Glad we got that out of the way.

Seriously though, the biggest lesson from this whole rehab was probably that I spent considerably more time worrying about certain parts of it than actually doing them.

The east-wall sill is the perfect example.

For years I imagined what might be underneath it and how difficult the demolition might be.

Then I opened it up and found... a board.

The other lesson?

Sometimes slowing down really is faster.

There were mistakes.

Measurements betrayed me.
Dowels refused to participate.
I cut away wood that didn't need cutting.
Geometry continued its decades-long vendetta against me.

But none of those mistakes ruined anything.

We figured them out.

Sometimes that's DIY.

A Few Things I Learned Along the Way

If I had to boil this project down, I'd say:

Don't assume old material needs replacing until you've actually looked at it.

Get your important reference lines right before fastening anything permanently.

Water management around exterior windows matters.

Identical windows do not necessarily mean identical openings.

PVC is useful where moisture exposure makes wood less appealing.

And perhaps most importantly:

Open it up before spending eight years worrying about what's underneath it.

That one's going on the list.

Hey,  thanks for stopping by - see ya' next time!

Frequently Asked Questions

Why replace the old cedar shingles if they weren't completely deteriorated?
The cedar had served well since 2011, but the rest of House 173 had gradually moved toward the Flagstone shingle-style siding installed beginning in 2016. Finishing the back porch in the same material made the exterior feel more cohesive. We also already owned much of the siding, so there was little reason to continue treating the porch as a temporary exception.

 
Why rebuild the window sills instead of simply covering the old ones?
The old sill treatments had awkward transitions, gaps and warped areas that would have remained visible even after new siding was installed. Rebuilding them allowed the sill profile to be corrected while adding outward slope and drip grooves that help manage water.

 
What is the purpose of a drip groove under a window sill?
Rainwater can cling to the underside of a sill and travel back toward the wall. A drip groove interrupts that path, encouraging the water to fall away before it reaches the building.

 
Why was flashing tape used beneath the east-wall sill?

The sill area contains seams and transitions where incidental water could potentially reach the wall assembly. Flashing tape adds another layer of protection behind the visible trim and helps direct moisture outward.

Why caulk exterior window trim?
Exterior caulk closes joints where trim meets windows, siding and adjacent materials. Besides creating a cleaner finished appearance, it helps reduce the chances of wind-driven rain and moisture entering behind the trim. Caulk should complement, not replace, proper flashing and drainage.

 
What preparation is needed before exterior caulking?
Surfaces should be clean, dry and free of dirt, loose paint and failed material. New caulk bonds only as well as the surface beneath it.

 
What paint was used on the PVC trim?
For this project, Sherwin-Williams Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel was used in Pure White with a semi-gloss sheen. The paint was selected after discussing the PVC trim application with the local Sherwin-Williams store.

Why choose semi-gloss for exterior trim?
Semi-gloss is easier to clean than flatter sheens and holds up well where dirt, pollen and rain splash can accumulate. It also gives traditional exterior trim a slight visual definition against darker siding.

 
Why does siding installation take longer on an old house?
Old walls develop dips, previous repairs, uneven framing and openings that aren't perfectly aligned. Much of the work becomes fitting, shimming, measuring and adjusting rather than simply fastening pieces to a perfectly flat surface.

 
How long did this project actually take?
Actual construction stretched across part of the summer of 2024.

From the time we bought the siding and said we'd finish the porch?

Eight years.

Let's use the first answer.

The Back Porch Rehab '24:  By the Numbers

2 walls sided
2 custom window sills
8 years the leftover siding waited under the porch
13 years the cedar shingles were in service
27 years living at House 173 when the rehab began
Several pieces of PVC trim reused
1 old painter's tool preferred over the new one
More than 1 geometry-related obscenity
At least 1 incorrectly cut board repaired instead of replaced
0 compelling reasons why I couldn't have done this in 2016

Keywords

back porch rehabilitation, back porch renovation, exterior window sill repair, vinyl siding installation, painting PVC trim, exterior window caulking, PVC window trim, old house exterior renovation, DIY porch siding, House 173, back porch