Or at least that's how I feel like it's going. The build was going along smoothly untill I got to working on the porch. For the life of me I could not understand the directions. So I began to wing it. Big mistake. It started off fine. I got the porch roof on, and the bottom sides on and then I got lost. I kept reading and then re-reading how to attach the posts and the front pieces. I went for what I thought was the correct way. Did both sides, glued and taped securely and went to bed. Woke up the next morning and thought something didn't feel right about it. Then as I was driving to work it hit me. I had glued everything so that the front post butted against the side post instead of on top and flush against the side scallop piece. So this pushed everything else off kilter. So after work I carefully seperated all the pieces with an exacto knife, sanded and then reapplied them the correct way. Since I was on a roll I figured I'd go ahead and do the top porch trim too. Glued and taped and went to bed. Woke up the next morning, went to look at it and wanted to bang my head against the wall. I had glued the left onto the right side and the right side onto the left. Out came the exacto knife. I finally got the pieces put on correctly but no matter how I squeezed or twisted the top railings of the porch were still too short. Thank goodness it wasn't that big of a deal since I had some spare wood about the same size. Last night I cut new pieces, painted and installed them. I also punched out all of the exterior trim of the windows and sanded them. I was surprised by how these are. Instead of one piece of arched trim it comes in 4 pieces. Top arch, two sides and the bottom ledge. It works for me as I want the sides white and the top of the arch the same color as the posts. I'm not sure how to get a touch of green on the windows exactly but I'm leaning towards a key stone on each one. The shutters are still up in the air too. I don't want a solid color but they are just a single flat piece with no decorations. Stencilling comes to mind but what to stencil I'm not sure. Do people have holiday shutters that they change out throughout the year? Can you tell I've never actually seen shutters in real life? : ) Any suggestions would be great. Here's a picture of the first porch mess up. You can see how short it made the top rails. The gable is just dry fitted here. I painted and installed it as well as the gable trim last night also.
