Beefing up Porch Columns!

I apologize for the long stint of time with no new postings, it's been such a busy past few weeks. In short it was family visiting us in Tacoma, then we visited family in Portland, then different family visited us in Tacoma, then catching up with friends. But now we're back and this past weekend we had some time to do a little house project. A project that had to be pushed to the top of the list.



Operation "curb appeal", which wasn't supposed to start until summer, had to officially start this past weekend. I noticed that the wisteria we planted was growing very quickly and attaching itself to the column, which was the plan so it would go across the top of the porch, BUT as I said, we had plans to beef up of the porch columns first to further add to the craftsman style of the house. So we decided we would at least get that column done, and then let the wisteria do it's thing.

The columns that are up now are just 5"x5" and looked kind of scrawny to me, just very basic and no character.

I wanted a tapering effect
on the columns so I built a
surrounding base of 2"x2"s
at the top and a base
of 2"x4"s at the bottom.

I went to Loews and had a 4'x8'x1" piece of plywood cut into 3 sections of 13.25" x 75". I wanted each piece to be wide enough for the base of the columns and 13.25" was perfect. Unfortunately, we couldn't get 4 sections out of the 4x8, so we'll have to go back later to finish the backside of the column.

I held each piece up to the actual column for proper measuring for the tapered sides, because I didn't want to take any chances on my math.

It was time consuming and a little difficult working around the wisteria which had already surrounded the column...



...my lovely wife Cassie gave each section two coats of sealer on all sides to help keep the wood weather resistant for many years to come. (See that chain linked fence? Our next big project is to replace that with a more charming wooden fence.)

And Voila!

It's not completely done, I still want to add more trim to it and extend the base of it down to the ground but it'll do for now. Oh, and remember, the column is only finished on 3 sides! We'll probably finish it up next weekend, if not sooner. The wisteria can be on it's climbing way!