This Oakland, CA home featured an impressive front porch with flared base brick columns. This distinctive design was undermined by the old style construction which had built the columns to be hollow and were barely reinforced with rotting wooden supports. This led to stability and safety issues. The hollow columns did work in our favor, however as we did not have to dismantle these structures in order to save them!   We opened holes in the base of the columns to allow for replacement of the rotting wood with rebar reinforcements. Concrete was poured through an opening at the top and after some additional bracing to the roof the job was done.