Good score!! Usually the caps are square. Black? Hmmm, I think I would paint everything else as I wanted it and then see about the columns. I have seen houses with black window trim and front doors, but I have a hard time imagining your house with black trim, seems too contempory for your house. Just my opinion of course! I like the idea of moss green with your brick and stone - more natural. Diane

I'd replace them with 4x4 PT posts. Wrap or unwrap--your choice. My sister's front porch is made from these, and a few years back when we went out to do some work for her we found termites in one of them. Yep, water + wood = termite food. So best to replace them with something less attractive to insects. Just make sure you prop up on either side when you remove each post to avoid cave-ins.

Hello, Building a nice screen room with tapered round columns is a bit time consuming but can be done. I've done a few on some historic homes. What I do is is align a piece of either 5/4 or 1 x along side the tapered column. I then hand scribe it vertically plumb, cut it so that it butts tightly against the column with its' slopes. The end result is a vertically plumb 1x or 5/4 jamb to create a square box in between the tapered columns to accomadate the new screen panels. Normally all the tapered columns are the same. So once you make one attachment piece to a column, you ccan copy them for all the rrest. Now you have a square opening to calculate your screen panels that would be installed in between. I make my own cedar screen frames and run screen spline tracks on the table saw. Of course I prefinish all the pieces and parts before assembly. If I can be of further help, please email me with your thoughts. All the best, The PorchGuy Here is a link that might be useful: My album

After looking at the framing more closely it appears to me that when the builder framed the second floor and bridges he did not terminate the LVL beams at the post but carried one LVL beam through to another LVL beam at the foyer. On the sketch below the red lines are 3 1/2" x 9 1/4" LVL beams and the black lines are I-Joists. It is clear that IF the LVL beams are sufficiently strong, you could remove the post. In order to determine if the beams are sufficiently strong you would need to tell an engineer the fiber strength (Fb) and Mod. of Elasticity (E) of the LVLs used and let him/her do the calculations. That strength information will be stamped on the members but the builder might have a receipt or the local lumberyards might only carry one kind of LVL or the engineer could assume the worst case. E would probably be in the range of 1.8 to 2.0 and Fb would 2,500 to 3,000. The spans are very short, the loads are very light and the beams are very strong so I suspect the beams will be strong enough to not need the post but since they carry point loads and uniform loads I can't make the calculation for you.