When the house was on the market, the front porch had a lot of potted plants on it. I suspect they were strategically placed to hide a potential problem, but they didn’t hide it very well. The fascia boards over the risers were badly rotted in a sawdust-held-together-by-paint kind of way. When you stepped on the deck boards that formed the steps, they would sag noticeably.
When I was moving the heavy old cast-iron bathtub and the propane refrigerator out, it was scary how much the steps sagged. The movers bringing our furniture in also commented on it.
I knew something had to be done, but we’ve wanted to put a transparent overhang over the front porch so that we have a dry place to clean up before going in the house. That idea has morphed into building a full-on screened lanai. It didn’t seem to make sense to re-do the front steps if we were about to tear them out.
After building the pavilion, I’m not sure that we need or want to build such an ambitious project. I will have to discuss it with HA upon her return, but in the mean time the steps were getting scarier. I would take pains to be sure to always step on the screw lines, where I knew there was support under the steps.
The Hired Hand and I decided to take action. The Hand pulled off the rotting riser fascia boards. I fully expected to find completely rotted substructure. What I found instead was that the substructure was in good shape but the stringers had been placed about 30 inches apart. The maximum span for the manufactured deck boards used for the steps is supposed to be 16 inches. No wonder they were sagging!
The local home improvement outfit doesn’t sell stringers, but I wasn’t willing to make the 120 mile round trip to the national big box store where I bought the stringers for the pavilion. Instead, I drove Timmy the Titan into town and scored four 2x12x8’ boards from which to cut stringers and four 1x6x10’ boards for risers.
We inserted three stringers between the old, existing ones. That reduced the span to a respectable 15 inches. We put the old decking boards back; even though they’re old, they’re actually in pretty good shape. I’m hoping they’ll clean up nicely with the pressure washer. They were pretty warped and wavy, but after being screwed down the boards looked pretty good.
The end result looks fine. More important, it feels solid. “We could have a dance party on here.” I think I can pressure-wash the decking boards into submission, and we’ll paint the risers when we paint the house. If we end up replacing it with a lanai, we’ll have spent less than a day and $200 making it safe and solid for now.
—2p
addendum 20250903@20:56
I was conflicted about putting too much into the front steps, since we’ll probably replace them before too long. Still, I felt kind of bad that we essentially rebuilt the whole structure, but didn’t replace the dirty, stained deck boards. I decided to pressure wash the front porch, and it made a world of difference.
Now the porch is not just structurally sound, it looks good, too.
