We have a covered storm porch, with 5 upright steel poles. No problem with them.
They have been covered in some sort of timbering, which is aged and weathered, and has stayed like that because I detest painting, and in particular painting external wood.
On the mid to long term projects has been finding a suitable way of cladding them. Annoyingly they not amenable to anything off the shelf.
Or so I thought, until SWMBO had one of those one-in-a-century questions which may have cracked it.
I had been fixating on cladding to retain the square (actually 4"x3") profile. For no particular reason. Her idea - well question - was (pointing to the outside plastic stack pipe I replaced in 2015) "Could we use one of those ?"
****ing genius !!!! You can even get white 110mm pipe !
Even more, a tubular profile will add a vaguely classical look to the place. Thus echoing the (rather out of place) classical portico the house across the road has put up this year :)
So the current big idea is to buy some 110mm pipe. Slit it open and pop it around the s***ty wood.
So what's the best way to slice lengthways through 2m of uPVC, ideally as straight as possible. Jigsaw ? Some sort of hot blade ?
I'm going to have a dug around and see if I can find the offcut from the stack pipe as an experiment in whether the pipe will open up from a single slit, or if I need to remove a section (two slits). I don't mind gluing the removed strip back so it's only visible from the back, not front if it's needed.