replacing tongue and groove porch boards
Looking for any tricks of the trade I might be missing - first timer on a job like this. I have an old townhouse in Baltimore with a great covered front porch. Its about 18X7 I think. At the top of the three steps up to it, about 24 boards (of I bet the 120 on the porch) are rotted about a foot in. I bought 1x3 pine tongue and groove 8 fters and primed all sides with a slowdry oil primer. I also bought a 6ga, 1hp hot dog compressor with 16 ga and 18 ga nailers. I have a good chopsaw as well. I figure I just remove the trim (and the side board on the left side b/c one of the boards is under it), and rip up the boards that are rotted - careful to preserve the groove of the first good board. I was going to give the exposed joists a wipe with linseed oil. Then, measure the replacement, chop it to fit, put it in and use either a spreading hand clamp or a piece of tongue and groove placed in the far side to tap it in place, and face nail it with 16 gauge nails. Then I'll work my way across nailing into the exposed tongues. When I get to the last one, rip it size widthwise, give the tongue a bead of glue and face nail it in. Am I missing anything? What about felt cloth on the joists? Is linseed oil on the joists necessary? I have an 18 mo. old and another on the way, and my wife will kill me if I rip up the porch and get stuck in the job - so any pitfalls folks know of would be helpful! Are you sure that you want to use pine? Is the pourch exposed to the elements? Yellow pine is (was) used in older homes as porch floor covering, so it shouldn't present a problem if it is properly finished. Only one problem I see is fitting the last piece in place. You may have to remove the tongue on the last piece to allow it to fall into place, and face nail it over the joisting. Any attempt at spreading the flooring may tend to split the adjoining pieces, so go easy. I'm not sure I wanted to use pine, but I found it at a mill yard and already spent ~$100 on it. I'm only doing a partial replacement and will likely need to do the rest in a couple years - at which point I think I'm going to use a composite. Funny thing about these porches (there's a block of them so we swap stories) is that the original wood (circa 1920) is an actual 1X3, while the only tongue and groove I could find is a nominal 1X3. Sorry, Chandler, but what does spreading the floor mean? I was figuring on ripping the last piece to size and face nailing. I saw this site: http://www.hammerzone.com/archives/d...g/t_groove.htm and the guy puts a bead of glue in when the last piece was pretty slender. Thanks for your comments, this forum has backed me up on a floor tiling, bathroom painting, radiator removal and a ton of other projects! Don't forget that composite gets hot in the summer. If people like to walk with no shoes, it could be unconfortable. I was referring to spreading the lumber while it is fresh in order to get the last tongue/groove to fit. It often doesn't work as well as cutting off the bottom of the groove and face nailing it. Do you plan on painting the flooring? If so, I would lightly pre-prime all the pieces (including the ends) in order to seal the wood and help avoid buckling. Not too much though or your tongue will be too fat... chandlermorse If I read right, your new boards aren't as thick as the old stuff. What were you going to do to address the height difference where they meet? I was going to beltsand where they meet. It will be underneath one of those waterhog mats, so you won't be able to see it. It'll do until I can replace them all. The weird thing is that these same boards have already been replaced once (with slimmer contemporary stock). The last time they were replaced they primed them as well. I'm wishing now I did more to weatherproof them. I did use a slow dry oil primer, but we'll see.
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