My parents went home early this week so I took a break from the porch – that and the weather was miserable and wet which is less than ideal for working on salvaging rotting wood. The remaining posts had some rot but we decided we can wait and replace them. We are planning to do them one or two a year.
To fix the damage that does exist we used a wood hardener (or petrifier). They recommend drilling holes and squirting it into the holes on vertical surfaces – I went one better and used a syringe and a 18 gauge needle to inject into the soft spots on the wood. After letting that set up for a couple of days I used an epoxy wood filler to fix up areas with missing wood. The great thing about the epoxy is how hard it sets up and how well it sands.
It wouldn’t be a post from me without some photos…
Before
After
Bummer, kids. How many posts are affected?
From the pics it looks like the rot is more to the outside of the posts so are they sound enough to hold things up until they’re replaced eventually?
Well we did replace one because we didn’t think it was repairable – see post 2. Only time will tell if the repairs will hold. The person who recommended the product said they used it on their windows which lasted another 5 years.