Hi, I'm Hal. A few months ago, my wife fell through our front porch. Don't worry! Luckily it wasn't anything too serious. She only minorly twisted her ankle and came away with a few cuts and scrapes. And there was a silver lining--we discovered our porch had termites! There was so much damage that it had to be completely replaced. We were lucky we caught it before they spread to the house, and we had been considering getting a new porch anyway. Now, a new porch later, we are completely termite free and the construction of our house is still sound. Getting rid of the termites and building the new porch taught me a lot about basic construction, though, and so I decided to start this blog as a way to keep learning.