We have painted our last paint....

The house painting is done!  I love to be able to do one of these posts where months of hard work comes together into something we are really proud of.  I know it's just one side, and there are three more to go and all, but it feels really good to say look what we did!

I apologize for the angle on all of these, but there's only about 9 feet of space before I hit the neighbor's fence, so full-on pictures just aren't happening.  Although I have thought about asking if I could prop up a ladder on his porch....

The storms aren't back on yet, because Kevin is actually going to whip together some combination wood storms.  They will have panels you can put on and remove from the inside.  All of the storms on the house are either in really bad shape or aluminum, so new storms has been a priority.  He is estimating about $50 a storm in materials, so I would expect them to come out around $75-100 because it's home improvement and everything always costs more than you think it will.  Although we are beginning to factor that into our budgets.  We were originally going to reuse the panes on the aluminum ones, but who knows, we might have to buy or make some new ones.  

In that picture above, you can see part of the windows we refinished last summer.  I like the white and gray with the shellac.  

Here's a close-up of where the trim meets the clapboard.  The Duramax paint is a winner.  It coats so well and looks great. It's really thick, so when it dries, everything looks smooth.  

Kevin had to get on the roof to do the very peak, because our ladder couldn't quite make it up that high.  The roof is a pretty steep angle and he had to use the chimney and vent stack to rest his paint bucket on while getting up and down from the roof.  He is happy to report that the roof is still gray; no paint was spilled. 

And finally, a picture of our new addition: A Honey Crisp apple tree.  Incidently, Honey Crisp apple trees also fit into our car, though I don't think it was too happy.  I drove fast.

PAINT!!!!!!!!!

As we were painting the house today, we got into a discussion over which part of the project was our favorite.  Kevin said that scraping was his at first. I think he changed his mind after I pointed out that with all of the respirators and power tools during the paint scraping process, it wouldn't have been possible for us to be carrying on a conversation like we were.  

I had no hesitation.  I love painting.  It's just so satisfying to see the paint up on the house, transforming it into the vision we had all along.   Here is how we left the house last weekend: 

Here is how we left it this weekend:

It is so close to being done.  That is with one coat of paint.  Kevin finished more than half of the shingles tonight.  The new ones show up, but I think with a second coat it shouldn't be too noticeable.  Here is a close-up of the shingles:

I don't know if you can really see it or not.  I'll have to take a better picture.  We would have been done this weekend for sure except on Friday we took advantage of my dad's truck and went on two dump runs.  One for the asbestos siding we took off the side of the house and one for random stuff like The Dryer That Almost Killed Kevin and the fake wood paneling from the kitchen wall (What is with us and only doing one wall?). Factoring in the hour there and back for the truck, the dump runs took 12 hours.  Turns out they like to keep the landfill wayyy out in the middle of nowhere.  The dump runs are really part of our new project... cleaning!  We have a back porch on our house that has served as the dumping grounds for junk that we don't want to deal with.  It also houses our bikes and power tools because things of value don't seem to do well in the garage.  They walk off.  So that needs some major organizing.  I had this thing that unlike other urban folk who seems to have garages too full to fit their cars, my car would always be able to fit in the garage.  That was before the fence project and the siding project.  So that needs to be rectified, because, after six years without a garage, I refuse to scrape my windows in the winter.  We also have an office that is pretty full of crap.  We would totally be kicked out of a condo if we ever lived in one.  

Finally, Arlo's latest garden antics.  I snuck up on him eating the snap peas, vine and all. This might have been my fault, because I've been sharing sweet peas from the farmer's market with him.  

Is it just me...

...or are rabbits getting bigger these days?  

This is what greeted us after a few panicked minutes of not being able to find Arlo anywhere in the yard yesterday. Finally he poked his head out from behind the broccoli leaves. I think he was a little perturbed that we took pictures and laughed at him before helping him out.

Anyway, on to the house.  We are officially done scraping paint!  And it only took about two months!  We are now onto repairs and cleaning.  The repairs actually are going pretty fast. Here's a nifty one to hide the fact that the facia slipped down slightly (look up at the peak of the roof): 

I also filled all of the nail holes, which added up to quite a few with both the old siding and the tar paper behind it nailed in.  Sorry there are no riveting pictures of filled nail holes. We filled nail holes and repaired damage (of which there was surprisingly little) with this: 

It's pretty smelly stuff (I actually donned the respirator even though it was supposed to be my first day without it), but it worked really well. It's actually an epoxy more than a wood filler.  If you're going to use it, do it when it's shady--it cured too quickly if the sun hit it.  

We're also repairing a piece of the skirting.  It had bowed out, and the siding had come in slightly to make a weird gap.  We used shim to bring a couple of clapboard pieces out slightly, and then took out shims that were behind the skirting (who knows why they were there in the first place).  Here is the spot where the board is removed.  

And here is all of the nasties living behind the board...eeew! That's dust, among other things.

We also had to remove one damaged clapboard as part of the fix on this corner.  I believe these actually aren't clapboard at all, but beveled siding. Anyone know anything more about this? Or where we can get a replacement?  We are planning to take the broken one down to Siwek's Lumber and have a new one milled, though I think this is going to be expensive. Here's the profile.

Another, and perhaps the most involved project (especially since Kevin's parents have our miter saw for the weekend) was replacing the broken shakes.  Here you can see the dog eared edge pieces.  

This is about how we left the house after the weekend, although as a final project, Kevin cleaned it, so it looks much fresher. This picture was taken yesterday.

We would like to have at least a coat of primer on by the end of next weekend.  How exciting!

Hello Bungalow!

So we got carried away yesterday.... and turned our house into a bungalow. Just to give you an idea (lucky we did the fence project or we would have no before pictures of this side of the house) this is what we began with:I know it's not the best picture, but you get the idea. We lucked out (so far). There is not one clapboard that needs to be replaced. There are maybe ten shingles that need to be replaced due to splitting from nails. We LOVE it. I don't think I can even express how much I love the siding. The shingles have a docked corner where they meet the sofit. If you zoom in on this picture, you can see it.


This is not to say everything is perfect. We need to redo the corner trim. The skirt is missing some trim. Poor girl.
Also, the beadboard is giving us trouble. There are roofing nails sticking into it, so the heat gun, scrapers, and the new paint shaver are pretty useless. It is protected, so a lot of the paint is in good condition and won't come off. We are considering Peel Away. Anyone used this? Is it worth it? Any other ideas? Other than the beadboard, the rest of the project seems doable.

The old cement asbestos shingles are double bagged sitting in our garage. We wore respirators the whole time, and maybe cracked 10% of them, so safety-wise, I think we're doing pretty well.


And I LOVE it.