6 Q & A: Column Talk

Libby recently sent us a message on Facebook asking about the columns on our front porch…

I saw on your blog awhile back that you redid your columns. I have similar columns on my front porch and have thought about doing the same thing. How did you do yours? Now that the weather is nice, it's time to start outdoor projects. Your new house looks great by the way.

…Thanks Libby and good question!

Now before we go any further, I have to admit, we did not build these columns ourselves. We had the columns crafted during our crazy month of packing, painting, refinishing floors, and moving, but I did do some super sleuth stalking as the columns went up, so hopefully my input will help.

Here is our porch pre-columns…

Nothing special. We needed to spruce up our curb appeal pronto. Enter our handy friend who we’ll call “Joe” for the sake of this story.

Joe was to build us 4 square columns: 2 on the front porch & 2 in the carport.

The plan was to build the wooden columns around the existing rot iron columns which would remain as the support for the porch.

 

First, a little trim was needed to remove the excess rot iron…

 
Next up, our friend Joe basically built a box around the rot iron. Be sure to use a wood that can stand up to weather demands and keep a level on hand to make sure your columns are nice and straight. Add trim as desired.

This is where we said farewell to Joe and continued on with this project ourselves. First on our list was priming these bad boys. We turned to Kilz exterior oil based primer.

After a couple solid coats of primer, we were ready to caulk the cracks and screw holes. Click here to see the post outlining this adventure…

 

Once the caulking was dry, all that was needed was a couple coats of exterior paint. We went with Parchment White by Behr.

Finished out with a few new house numbers and we were in business!
   

-Cara