House Week 38: Researching for the Right Planks for the Front Porch

Yep, it’s a real house all weather tight and i have officially moved in!!!  YEA!!!!!!!  Weather tight is actually more important then you may think here right now with our sideways rain and shooter marble sized hail.  Another thing that is tremendously important is solid ground, and well it’s about time i move on from the ever so trendy plywood porch to something a bit more traditional, like wood planks maybe?  So off to the wood planks place (Ashby Lumber) i went to find some wood…

The weekend consisted of researching the ever burdening question “What kind of material should i buy?”  While this sounds easy, it’s actually tricky since there are tons of products out right now that are really only made to last a few years.  Crazy huh!  Who’d want to spend all of the time laying boards down for their porch to only do it a few years again?  Well the answer is no one.  Most of these products are marketed to people who want to do something cheap and don’t care for one reason or another, usually they either are already selling the place and just want to spruce it up or they are planning to soon and would like to get a ouple of extra dollars.  I narrowed it down to a couple of different products.

First was Trex, which is made of “recycled materials”.  I hate it when things refuse to tell you what they are made of…it’s just lame!  So that was one ding, and they were eliminated as a choice when i found out that it is not recommended to place the boards in direct sunlight.  Ummm, that is silly!  From speaking with others who have it installed it seems to hold heat a bit too well so the surface becomes ridiculously hot to the touch which would so not work with my need to be barefoot all year.

Second was Merbau, which is a super hard wood which for this product is grown sustainably in the tropical Asia-Pacific region and was promised to not burn my feet, yea!  The wood has a soft brown grain with streaks of yellow highlights giving it a fantastic depth.  The product has a 50 year lifespan, which then you can turn it over and use the other side so 100 years in total.  Another bonus, something i only have to do once not matter how long i live.  It wasn’t cheap, but it did not break the bank either, decision made, time to go pick it up.

1 comment:

Inder-ific said...

Yeah, I'd say 100 years is a pretty good lifespan for a house that is still less than 100 years old. That should see you through all of your needs.