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 shitty 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.