Triming out the Portico

When I last left you, I had spent a ridiculous amount of time building rafters for the portico over our new door at the cabin. It wasn't easy, but when it was over I had the perfect angle and width. Now I just had to make it look pretty.

I started with the brackets. I looked online and everywhere to purchase pre-made brackets, but couldn't find the size or price range I was looking for. In the end I spent $24 on green treated 4x4 posts to make my own. It went something like this:

I purchased two posts with a decorative end to make the brackets pretty, and cut them at 36" long so that the decorative end would stick out a bit.
Then I cut a plain 4x4 at 24" and cut off a bit of the end at an angle, again, just for decoration.
After I attached these two together at a 90 degree angle, I used the remainder of the plain 4x4 as the diagonal support. To do this I cut one side at a 45 degree angle, then lined it up with my L bracket, and drew a line exactly where to cut the second 45 degree angle. I attached everything with 4" screws and glue.

Or you can just ignore that, since this picture pretty much says it all:

Attaching the brackets to the joists was a whole other adventure. I tried a number of different ideas and methods over the course of a week, but ultimately decided to notch out the joists. The notches go up 1.5", and down at my 22.5 degree angle. This way the brackets can sit at a perfect 90 degree angle, parallel with the door.

Trimming out the face of the portico wasn't a walk in the park either. I used 1x6 cedar boards we had purchased to fix some fence panels but ultimately not used. (The fence panel that the Hubs broke, by the way, when attempting to throw materials off our third floor deck into the the Bath Crashers dumpster below. But I digress...)

My decorative posts meant that I had to trim out my cedar boards at precisely the right angle. Luckily I did the whole "measure twice, cut once.."

I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty proud of this fit.

The final step was to cut outdoor grade bead board to line the inside of the portico.

Remember that light I wanted to install? I quick attached an electrical box to the center, and then cut my center bead board piece around it.

There were 5 pieces of the inside roof total, since I had to trim out the small space on either side of the brackets.

Nothing is attached here yet, I just laid all the pieces on loosely to make sure that they fit before we headed up north.

The boys were a big "help" during the process, as we ended up spending a couple of nice summer afternoons outside in the garage together figuring this all out. #Sawdust'nLegos.

Since he had been so patient during the building, I decided to let Ryder in on the fun part- painting. Once all the pieces were cut, we laid them all out for 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of exterior paint. Ry was a professional.

I was so busy carefully watching Ry paint, that my little ninja snuck in undetected and tried his hand at painting as well.

I figured at this point we might as well make it a family affair, so I quick stripped him down to a diaper to avoid ruining his clothes and let him at it. He was pretty excited.

I briefly considered staining the bead board a natural wood tone and just painting the trim white, but when I put it all together, the wide angle of my roof line made the interior roof really noticeable. I decided with our red house with white trim, that an all white portico would look better.