Deck to Porch conversion
Fasy forward to Memorial Day weekend in 2007, and work on the project resumed.After some doodling, I came up with a simple design for the porch. First up in the building process was to attach the "ridge board" to the house. The ridge board is what holds up the rafters on the high end of the porch roof.
About 10 feet above the deck surface, there is a double-course of bricks that extend out from the face of the house. I decided that this would be ideal for resting the ridge board on. In order to do this, I had to remove the existing gutter and fascia boards.
The ridge board is 24 feet long, and is made from 2x8 boards. Before installing the boards, I primed them with oil-based Kilz paint.
When installing a ridge or ledger board, it must be secured to the house to prevent it from pulling away. Simply nailing it in place is not enough. This house is built with concrete block and brick facing, so I bought 6 inch long masonry anchors for securing it. They had to be long enough to go all the way through the brick and into the concrete block beind it. Instead of using the nut that was supplied with the anchor, I replaced it with a coupling nut ( you will see why in just a bit). These anchors work great - as you tighten the nut, the tapered head on the back forces the sleeve to expand and grip the masonry.
Half inch holes were drilled into mortar joints between the bricks, and deep into the underlying concrete blocks. The anchors are then hammered into the holes, and the nut tightened to lock the anchor into position.
Below is a picture of the anchors installed and tightened down:
Holes were then drilled into the ridge boards that allowed the board to slip over the coupler nuts. This allows the ridge board to be pulled tight against the brick face of the house when installed.Bolts with plumbing flanges acting as oversized washers were then threaded into the coupling nuts and tightened down. That ridge board is going nowhere!
With the ridge board secured, the next job was to attach the 4x4 posts that would hold up the beam for the other (lower) end of the rafters to rest on. In order to fasten the brackets, I had to drill into the steel beams and tap the hole for a threaded fastener.
With the brackets bolted down, I used a "paddle bit" to make a small counterbore in the bottom of each post to clear the bolt head. This allowed the post to sit down squarely into the bracket.
The posts were installed one at a time, and braced in two directions to keep them from moving. A beam to carry the rafters was made by sandwiching a 1/2" layer of plywood between a pair of 2x8 boards. Steel brackets were placed on top of each post, and the beam was lifted into position.
The next step is installing the rafters - Come back soon to see the progress!