More exterior details

Getting the painting done was a big one, for sure.  That took a lot of time and effort.  But there were still other items to be done (Ha!).  I want to get the final inspection done this fall, so I needed to get railings made for the decks so those can pass inspection.  We also needed to get the finished posts installed on the front entry.

The posts were a bit of an effort.  First off, they are pretty massive.  They are 9" square, solid glulam construction, and about 12' high, so they are heavy.  Second, they are a custom size, so there are no standard post bases made for these, so I had to fabricate my own.  Picked
up some steel and got the welder out and made a pair of bases that looks like this:

The top and base plate are 3/8" thick steel, and the rest is 1/4" thick.  This should be enough to hold up the entire house, so I think they will handle the posts just fine...  After this I did a cold galvanizing process to them which is basically a heavily zinc-loaded paint that you apply and it protects the metal as if it were galvanized.  It doesn't look like much, just a dull gray color.

My friend Brook and I put the posts up by jacking up the entry roof slightly, removing the temporary posts and lining up the new ones and getting them into place (including drilling the post footings for the anchor bolt).  The tractor was a huge help with this, as lifting those posts up was tough with how heavy they were.  Here's a shot of the posts after installation was complete.

The deck railings are required to meet code, but these are not intended to be permanent.  I have much bigger plans for some Stainless Steel railings using crimped wire mesh to keep the view more open, but that is a couple years down the road, so we need something both to pass inspection and to keep things safe and usable.  In the mean time, this will suffice as a decent, low cost option.

We had to add some posts as attachment points first.  Started with the screen porch:

Did the same thing to the Kitchen deck:

And finally the Balcony.  This one was tougher to do as it really gives me the willies working that close to an edge that is 3 stories up, especially being on top of a step ladder at that edge, pounding posts into place...  But I was able to add in the needed posts and then attach the railings to the steel corner posts with a few simple angle brackets I made up.  The gate is for roof access, as that will be the easiest way to get to the chimney for cleaning as required.  This took a few days due to the extra complexity with the gate and needing to make brackets.  A little hard to photograph such a small space.

Note:  I originally started this post back in Oct 2014, but at that point the burden of keeping up with everything got to be too much, so I have not touched the blog since then.  I am now trying to get caught back up, at least some.  A whole bunch more to follow, time permitting...