Jacking the Back Porch

There is a part of me that is wondering why I am even showing this at this stage because it still doesn't look great, but Tera and I worked so hard yesterday that I wanted to show what we did (while trying to contain 6 kids under 5, I might add!)

The back porch has been leaning incredibly bad since we bought the house. We are going to eventually rip off the whole thing and replace it with an addition to the house; mud room, laundry room, new inside stairs, etc. We can't do that for quite awhile, so I am trying a temporary fix to make things at least look a little bit better out back.

Before we bought the house. Notice the angle cut on the bottom of the door?

After jacking up the back porch. Notice the non-painted part above the top step? It's still slanted, but not as bad as it was!

We rented a hydrolic jack and started to experiment. It took several tries, and lots of digging and pulling out of old, rotten wood, but we have a temporary fix and the floor is a bit more straight.

The whole back porch never had a proper foundation. The whole thing was resting on a rotten 2x4 and the front corner post had rotted completely and just crumbled when we started looking at it. There is also a deep layer of very soft sandy dirt. When we would put a brick under the jack it would completely sink into the soft dirt. It is going to take a lot more work than I hoped to make it last until we can really rip it down and add the addition.

What's holding up the porch for now.

Tera and I look at this fix as a temporary fix for whatever we figure out for the real temporary fix that will last until it gets ripped out and replaced properly. You can see from the spots with the lack of paint how high we actually brought the porch up. I have to figure out how my screen door will go back on since they cut it to match the angle the porch was leaning. The pictures don't make it look wonderful, but when you step in onto the floor you aren't leaning like a capsizing ship as you walk into the house. I am sure Jared and Marty are cringing as they look at what we did, but we just had the jack for the day and I wasn't going to leave it leaning like it was. So, like I said, it's a temporary fix for the real temporary fix in the upcoming weeks, but I feel like we really accomplished something.

The front corner's temporary supports.

You gotta love old houses!! Ours will be awesome!! We will be ripping off those back stairs in the next week and. . . We get a new roof starting on Monday!!!! Woo hoo! What a difference that will make!!! I will keep posting.