Building Gypsy Rose

A porch is a special place. Sadly, many of the porches built today are sterile, characterless decks, quickly assembled with pressure treated yellow pine that ultimately warps, cracks, and cannot be safely walked on with bare feet without risk of splinters. Or, there are the contemporary porches built with modern "engineered" products - planks made of recycled plastic or other composite cellulose fibers and polymers that just don't have the warmth of real wood.

For Gypsy Rose, we wanted a porch made of wood, built the "way they used to." I chose cedar for the posts and trim and Meranti for the floor. Today, I completed the trim around the windows and front door and then started on the porch floor. 

 I wanted to create a clean, finished edge to the front of the porch, rather than leave the end grain of the tonge and groove Meranti exposed. To create the desired effect, I had to miter the boards around the posts and secure them to the frame with self-drilling screws tapped into the steel. I used a round-over bit on the router to give the perimiter a nice soft edge. It took much longer to lay the three outer edges of the porch than the 30 planks in between, but it was well worth the effort.