Summer Project: The Entryway

This is the front door to my little abode:

The entire entryway has been slowly crumbling to pieces about since I bought the place four years ago. Starting with the 80 year old wrought iron railing, which was held together with spit and twine.

Then there’s the spot where the wrought iron was sunk into the concrete, rusted, and subsequently over the course of several decades, well nature took it’s course..

Nature, in the form of a squirrel named Frida, is also responsible for the corner of my door which has been gnawed off.

This is my fault, because Frida was a friendly squirrel, and I used to feed her peanuts by hand. And when I was inside and she was hungry… well, you see what happens.

The culprit (pre cats of course, who wouldn’t stand for this at all):

Squirrel feeding is by no means a new activity for me, as evidenced by this picture, circa 1985:

That’s Clifford. I named him after the Big Red Dog, which was actually fairly creative for the animal naming scheme I had back then, since my pet rabbit was named Hopsy, and my pet hamster was named Hammy. And my grandmothers parakeet (which I named) was called Perry.

Okay, we went from broken porch to parakeet naming, so I’ve gotten a little off-topic here. The moral of that story was don’t hand feed squirrels, or make sure they can’t reach a corner of your door to gnaw on.

The last front porch flaw I’d like to point out comes to us courtesy of the scotch-tape, popsicle stick, and toothpick weilding previous owners.

You can see here that some highly unqualified person attempted to use mortar and/or some runny mystery substance to patch up areas between and around these stones. And you can thank them for the upcomming lesson on tuck-pointing, which I feel obliged to share with you all to ensure that this never happens to anyones house ever again. I mean, W.T.F?

I have to move on before actual steam starts pouring out of my actual ears.

I already started on this project the same way many projects start in this house… with demolition.

Tools of Destruction:

Something you may not know about me is that I am like Macgyver for tools. (If you don’t belive me, read this post wherein I use a screwdriver and zip-ties to get a fence post out of the ground.) So, when my usual Tools of Destruction weren’t doing the job, I found something else handy and used that. Like a BFR.

The end result:
  
                          

Next up, tuck pointing, building a new storm door, having a new concrete pad poured, and installing new railings. Ahhhh, projects. The makings of a perfect summer.