Should I Repair or Replace a Rotted Porch Post?
Your porch columns may look stately from a distance – but up close, you know they’ve seen better days. While cosmetic damage is one thing, a rotted porch post can potentially damage your entire porch and even your house. If your posts are rotting, they need your attention ASAP! In today’s blog, we’re digging into whether you should repair or replace a rotted porch post.
At TurnTech, we’re a full-service custom woodshop that serves the entire country. While we carve a wide range of interior and exterior accent pieces, wooden porch posts are some of our signature items. Keep reading to learn about rotted porch post repair – and to discover exceptional options to replace your porch posts.
When & How to Repair Porch Columns
Repairing a rotted post can be the low-effort, high-reward solution that preserves your porch for several more years and saves you some money – compared to replacing them. Whether or not you can repair the columns entirely depends on the extent of the rot in the post itself. These are the key steps for how to repair porch columns:
- Check the Column for Paint Loss – The more intact paint there is, the more likely it is you’ll be able to repair your porch columns.
- Examine the Area of Rot – Look to see how far the rot has spread and determine if it affects the center of the column. If only a small line or if the corner of the column is showing rot, you may be able to proceed with rotted porch post repair.
- Test the Column – To test and see how much of the column is rotten, simply push a pencil into the wood. Anywhere it pushes through the column is completely rotten. If most of the column is free of rot, you’re in the clear to try preserve it.
- Apply Bondo to the Post – While Bondo is also used for automotive repair and can be found at any auto store, it’s the product we recommend using to seal rotted wood. Cover all raw or rotten wood with a layer of Bondo. The Bondo will seep into the rotten wood to seal and preserve the weak wooden fibers. Do this in time and you may stop the spread of rot, preserving the column for another few years.
Whether you choose to repair or replace rotted porch posts, you can’t ignore them. If left alone, the column will start sinking, causing the porch roof to begin to sag. This sagging can even damage the main structure of your house.
Remember, when it comes to rotted porch posts, the level of care taken with them is much more important than their age. We’ve seen 200-year-old columns in great shape – while newer but poorly cared for columns can be destroyed by rot.
Thinking about changing your porch posts? See some of the most popular porch column styles.
What to Know about Replacing Your Porch Posts
If the rot has spread too far – or you’d rather not put time into the repair – replacing your porch posts with TurnTech is easy and convenient. We can custom craft ANY size and style porch post, ensuring that we replace the rotten one with an exact replica. In most cases, all you’ll need to do to replace a rotted porch post is send our team a few pictures of the post in question from different angles, and we’ll build an exact replica. Not only does this ensure that your new post is an exact stylistic match to the other columns, but it can also be key to ensuring accuracy when restoring historic front porches.
At TurnTech, we can craft a 100% custom porch column that can exactly match a one-hundred-year-old column – and we make it extremely easy and convenient. That’s right – we provide complete online ordering and shipping all over the country!
