A Post, About A Post

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, but that doesn’t mean that my woodworking journey took a hiatus. Quite the opposite! I’ve done plenty more with turning, and playing around with epoxy more and more.

But this latest round of working with wood was a new challenge entirely for me.

A little backstory: A friend of ours lives in a rental property on some land, and the house/land next door is also owned by the same landlord. Well, the other renters left somewhat abruptly, and left a mess. I’ll skip some of the nasty details here, but the damage was more than just something like a little hole in the wall… One of the things the tenant did was cut one of the load bearing posts on the main outbuilding.

And I was asked if I could fix it…

Seriously, who cuts down supports for no good reason?

And me, in my infinite ability to say “I can do that” before even thinking about it, had to figure out what to do.

My biggest challenge was figuring out how to support the roof while I was replacing the post. After some though I went with the underhoist safety stand from Harbor Freight. It wasn’t tall enough on its own, but sitting on a sturdy table made it the perfect height.

Once that was in place, it was just a “simple” matter of putting in a new 4×4, or in this case two stacked 4x4s since I couldn’t get one long enough. Simpson Strong-Tie clips are a lifesaver in cases like this! Afterwards I wrapped the new post in the the original 2x6s that were there in the first place. This kept it looking like everything else and added a little extra stability.

I still had to replace the cross beam next to the post, but that was because I had to actually damage the original to get the clips in place. Once more, the safety stand was a lifesaver holding the support almost where I needed it to be while I anchored the other side.

It was definitely an unusual project for me, and I honestly hope I don’t need to do anything like it again anytime soon. But if I do, I now know for certain that I can do it instead of just thinking that I can!

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