The planning of the cedar porch was difficult. Originally I had asked the designer for a screened in porch. He came up with a cookie cutter design which was the same as every other generic screened in porch in the town. Dad saw this design and said, "this is a special house you should build something high end like a cedar covered porch." He showed me some pictures on the internet he found of some beautiful cedar porch additions. I was enticed but I hesitated because it meant changing my plans and I was not that construction savvy anyway so I didn't know what would be involved to make it work in Florida with hurricane codes. I wasn't even sure if it was possible. However the more I thought about it and the more dad alleviated my concerns with his engineer/construction experienced based answers the more I fell for the idea.
Another deciding factor was I had previously made a beautiful cedar BBQ bench. Because of this, a cedar covered porch was ideal to protect it and to complement it. See the picture below of the western red cedar BBQ bench.
The next step was to get the designer to draw it up. So I drew some sketches up in Microsoft Visio, Dad and I ran some engineering calculations and we submitted the drawing to the designer. Since the designer had little experience with cedar and ignored our request to hide all the fasteners for the joints the result was unacceptable. It had a bunch of exposed galvanized hurricane ties all over the place and weird half lap joints that were not very strong. After seeing this I realized that we could not rely on the designer to provide us with a solution to any problems that we encountered on the porch. This was just not his field of expertise.
Dad and I continued refining the design. We designed in mortise and tenon joints with oak pegs that were stronger than the Simpson hurricane ties that designer suggested. We also came up with an embedded lag bolt joint which made use of a birds mouth that tied the rafters to the ledger and the main beam. The bolt was completely hidden from view making the design more pleasing to the eye. We did leave the exposed ABU66 Simpson brackets that tie the posts to the foundation that the designer came up with. The alternatives were just too crazy and the brackets look kind of neat anyway. If I wanted to I could cover them with cedar trim. We resubmitted the changes to the designer and then to the professional engineer.
When the professional engineer analyzed it, he put his stamp of approval on it as well as a disturbing note. The note essentially made it impossible for us to build the cedar porch and covered the engineer if a failure should happen. Basically it required the cedar to posses high bending strength which meant that a select structural grade cedar had to be used. I called around and all I could find was no. 2 cedar.
Due to the large amount of time that had been spent designing the porch, the cost of the materials, the frustration encountered with designer's defensiveness when we asked questions he did not know the answer to and the building departments crazy code requirements, dad was of the opinion that he was sorry he came up with the cedar porch idea.
However one of my strengths is I know when I have a good idea to pursue. I can visualize the idea and then latch on to it which then makes me ignore all the reasons people find for me not to do what I'm trying to do and I become unstoppable. To over come this obstacle I decided to use bigger lumber. I knew I could get the engineer to remove the note if I did this. When I told my dad this he said those magical words that I love to hear him say, "the design is over built" I countered with, "the bigger dimensions make the cedar porch more architecturally pleasing" With the new dimensions I attempted to contact the designer but he was off on vacation for three weeks. Luckily he had given me a PDF and I went to editing that drawing in Microsoft paint. I then was able to convert it back to a PDF and I submitted the 5th iteration of the design to the engineer. We got his stamp of approval and the building departments approval soon followed.
After jumping through all those hoops, the foundation was constructed (which was discussed in a previous blog) and then I ordered the cedar. I obtained the cedar from Lowes for about $4000. They actually got it form a lumber yard in Tampa FL. It was really beautiful western red cedar. I had obtained some planed 2" thick planks and some rough cut beams the largest of which was 6" x 12" x 20'. The cedar was appearance grade no. 2 cedar with a few splits in the wood here and there.
Why did we use western red cedar? Cedar is excellent for its durability in the outdoor environment. It is rot and bug resistant. It is also one of the less pricey varieties of specialty lumber and large dimensions are obtainable. We considered cypress and red wood which are two other woods that can be obtained in large dimensions but it was very difficult to locate anything in the quantity we needed and with a reasonable price. Besides these woods would not match the BBQ bench.
Western red cedar is aromatic but not as aromatic as eastern red cedar which is typically what cedar chests are made of. Most likely the cedar I purchased came from the pacific north west. Check out this link for some more information about north west cedar trees and what they look like. The western red cedar tree is a large to very large tree, ranging up to 230 ft tall and 13 ft in trunk diameter. One draw back of the wood is it is about half as strong in bending strength as oak so that larger dimensions of wood are required. See this link for strength characteristics of common woods.
With the cedar in house the first step was to put the ledger on the house. The ledger is a beam that holds the rafters up on the house side of the porch. It has to be secured to the wall very well so strong winds can not rip the roof out from the wall. I chose L anchor bolts to secure it to the house. Since I have a cinder block house and the cells are hollow I had to cut holes in the blocks and fill the cells with cement where the anchor bolts are located.
The first step I took was to drill 5/8" holes in the cinder blocks with my harbor freight hammer drill. Next I cut a passage for the cement to be put in the hollow cell. I then stuffed the cell with balled up aluminum foil where the cement was to stop at the bottom. For the cement I mixed my own by using two parts sand, 1 part cement and water. I found that the more sand I added the less strength it had so I kept the amount of sand content low. Since the 5/8" hole is sloppy for the 1/2" anchor bolt I made some wood guides to hold the bolts perfectly perpendicular to the house and I fastened the guides to the house temporarily with tapcons.
Below is a picture of the anchor bolt securing operation I did and if you study the picture you can see that I changed strategies as I proceeded along the wall. Instead of making two openings per bolt I ended up only using one in the end. In the picture some of the wood guides are still in place on the left.
After all the bolts were secured in place, the ledger was prepared. The ledger is made of 4" x 10" cedar and is 22' long. However I could not obtain a 22' long piece of lumber. So I used two beams to make it up. This necessitated the use of a lap joint. At this point I was faced with the question: how do I make a lap joint? I had never made one before. I immediately checked youtube and found this video.
Before making the lap joint I planed the rough beam with my porter cable thickness planer. Really for the beams I was dealing with the planer was just to small but we forced it an made work. Once planed, I invested in a new Dewalt circular saw and a finish blade and started on the half lap joint. I put a wood plywood guide on the beam so I would not make the half lap joint too long or accidentally cut beyond the final joint line. Like the video I made several passes about a quarter inch apart at the same depth as shown below.
The next step was to take a hammer and knock out the cut pieces. They came off so easy and well it was amazing. As shown below.
To make the half lap joint surface smooth I used my electric finishing sander. This is not just any ordinary sander. I knew I was going to have to do a lot of sanding on this project so I invested in a half sheet finishing sander made by Makita shown in this link. Boy did the sander save a lot of time and it did a beautiful job. Shown below is the result.
I sanded the rest of the beam and ran a router bit down the two prominent corners to make the wood more appealing to the eye. I prepared the second beam the same way.
The next part was to drill the holes in the ledger so that it could go on the anchor bolts in the house. To do this I made a plywood guide by placing a strip of the plywood on the bolts on the house, marking the bolt locations on the plywood and then drilling the holes in the plywood. I then secured this guide on the beams and used my drill press from Harbor Freight to make perfectly straight holes in the wood. I oversized the holes slightly to help the installation of the ledger onto the bolts. This procedure is tricky and must be accurate but my attention to detail and patience paid off as the ledger went right on without trouble.
The lap joint ended up being architecturally pleasing too. It is not perfectly tight but its pretty good for my first lap joint.
Because I had read that galvanized metal leaves black marks on cedar, I used stainless washers and nuts to fasten the ledger to the wall. After the ledger was installed I put the finish on. For the finish I chose Olympic Elite Woodland Oil natural variety which is illustrated in this link. This is basically modern day linseed oil with UV protection, mildew/algae resistance and water proofing. It is also self leveling so that means no runs and is supper easy and quick to apply. I used a foam brush to apply it.
With the ledger installed, I was well on my way to constructing my high end cedar porch. There was only one problem. Dad was leaving. He had stayed for about 4 months and his help was invaluable but it was time to go. I would be doing this project on my own now. As dad packed up and left I wondered how would I do the next step all by myself which was to put the 300 lb 20' beam up so that the rafters could be supported?
Find out how I did this on my own in my next blog..
Happy Building
The Dr.
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