It Rained on My Parade...and In My Porch...and on My Pillow?!*^%

I was really happy with this project when I was done. I only had to go to Lowe's once - no really! It only cost $30. It went smoothly. I had never done something like it before, but thought it through in my head and within a few hours was done - pretty much exactly like I had envisioned in my head.

To review it cost practically nothing (on the home improvements scale), it only took me 2.5 hours from start to finish, it came together as planned and it blended in seamlessly with the house.  So what went wrong? Well not everything is about ease and looks. This project had a function too. Unfortunately last night we had our first down pour since I finished this project 10 days ago and it FAILED miserably

....as miserably as my project failed that was nothing in comparison to my roof last night. That went something like this... "Hey why is my pillow so wet?" I looked up. "Ohhhhh." ....btw- I don't do roofs. Anyone have a great slate repair guy?

You can see where the drips land after a light rain

So what was the project you may ask? I wanted to extend the drip edge on our screened in porch so the water would miss the slate floor and not splash back into the porch. Besides all the wetness inside the porch whenever it rains, over the years this splashing has caused the wood around the porch to rot. I had already replaced several posts and much of the framing last fall because I was concerned the rotted posts would not hold up if we got a lot of snow - which we did - so glad I did not procrastinate on that project! On top of the rot, I noticed during the melt and re-freeze last winter that the drips from the roof landed on the slates and then would refreeze which started to loosen the mortar between the slates. We LOVE this porch! So eliminating all these issues are important to us.









A Mystery - I must admit the issues does have me perplexed. This house is 76 years old. So why now am I just noticing these issues with the drip line? Sure the wood posts could have been replaced in the past without me being able to tell. But the mortar between the slates. I can tell the mortar is original. My only guess is at some point the roof was replaced from slate tiles to asphalt shingles (these are only asphalt on the entire house). I am guessing at that time, the roof line (drip edge) was slightly changed (shortened). So in essence there use to be a slightly wider overhang of the roof than there currently is.

I figured the easy way was to just extend the edge of the roof a few inches and the water would just roll off the edge and fall onto the mulch below - missing the porch all together. With that I went to Lowe's to pick up some edging and 2x2 lumber. I only spent $30 - which for any project can be considered a win...unless of course it doesn't work :-(

Step 1 - Cleaning & Prep
Clean the area to be worked on. You will notice the before pictures above have some green algea and lots of tree debris.

Step 2 - Transition

Transition mentioned in Step 2

Make a transition from the plum edge of the porch so my 2x2 would sit at the same angle as the roof line. For this I used some of my left over 3/4" hardwood plywood from the Breakfast Nook Bench project. I set my circlular saw at the correct angle and used my circular saw guides (to see these guides check out the Breakfast Bench post)

I then attached this transition to the underside of the current drip edge (see picture below)

Step 3 - Attach New Wood
Attached the 2x2's over the transition pieces with sheet rock screws

Step 4 - Install Drip Edge

Installed drip edge over the 2x2's slipping the back edge of the drip edging under the asphalt shingles so no water could get under the edging.

Step 5 - Wait for Rain
When the rain came last night my new edging had its first real test. It did not fair so well. The rain rolled over and then down to the bottom of the drip edge before falling down to the ground (or porch in my case). The current edging, as you can see in the above pictures, kind of rolls under itself - bringing the edge back in towards the porch. This underside edge is still over the porch. So this is what happened last night...

Back to the drawing board...