How Dummies Build a Porch - The Freelance Files MMLXXXVIII

porch roof

We sometimes wonder just where the freelancers we feature come up with some of their cockamamie pronouncements. Sometimes it's rank stupidity; sometimes it's utter bullshit – but the ones that we find most disheartening are the ones where the clueless freelancers thought  they'd found a dependable source, only to perform a copy-reword-paste job on something that had been written by another clueless freelancer. Ever notice how blurry a second- or third-generation photocopy is? You get the picture. Well, that's what happened yesterday, when we caught eHow.com's Ciele Edwards parroting material from an even older freelance post at ExtremeHowTo.com. Meet "Sonia," and her "BUILD A SCREENED PORCH."¹

Whatever Sonia's alleged qualifications may have been is, sadly, lost to posterity. We note that what little is currently being posted at the site has been written by former advertising and marketing types; presumably Sonia came from the same mold. Based on some of her more bizarre statements, however; that she didn't arrive at the site from a construction background is a no-brainer. That's despite her long list of articles; which, oddly, includes bylines for half a dozen different names. Go figure...

Whatever the case, it was pretty apparent that Sonia (or whoever) was chattering through the proverbial hat, based on bizarre statements like,

• "Whether adding an enclosure to a roofed area, or building from start, in many instances you will be required to provide a building plan for any home addition to local building authorities. You may also be required to obtain a building permit." – What's the difference, Sonia?
• "Pouring a slab of the size shown is do-able for many Extreme How-Toers... Do not attempt, however, to mix the concrete for this project. You will need to purchase bulk concrete." –WTF is "bulk concrete," anyway? And why can't an "Extreme How-Toer" mix his (or her) own concrete? 
• "The footing should be sized to match your geological location." – What's a "geological location"? Are footings different on the continental craton as opposed to the piedmont? Our staff geologist wants to know...
• "Pour the concrete, level it off with a drag and trowel it smooth." – Maybe they call it a drag in some other part of the world, but we've only heard the tool called a screed...

Sonia apparently attempted to harvest a how-to from someone who'd repaired a porch in the ell of an attached garage, telling her readers that,

"During construction the roof was slightly jacked up and propped in place."

Yeah, well, that's useful information for a wannabe porch-builder. And then there's the out-of-the-blue piece of rank bullshit that caught our staffer's eye in Ciele Edwards' post:

"If constructing a roof, as opposed to screening-in a roofed porch, fasten a sill plate to the house between the two side walls and flush with their top edges."

After careful reading and a day or two of "consideration," we decided that Sonia was telling people to attach a ledger to the wall of the house; although she said nothing about clearing off the siding. Whatever the case, the crap about "between the two side walls and flush with their top edges" makes about as much sense as anything else this idiot had to say; particularly bullshit like,

"Use blocking on the side to anchor the hanging rafters."

We have no clue...

Nope, we found ourselves a classic Dumbass of the Day and a website that cares so little about accuracy that this piece of rubbish has stood for eighteen years and counting. Somebody out there ought to be ashamed... but this is the internet, where it appears that no one has any shame!

¹ The site owners have swapped in some (slightly) better content by "Chad" about how to build a screened porch on concrete. If you want to see Sonia's version, however, use the Wayback machine at archive.org. The original URL was  https://extremehowto.com/screened-porch/

DDIY - PORCHES