Exterior
A couple of weeks ago, Stephanie picked up some fuchsia plants at the Fred Meyer fuchsia event. She got a great 2-for-1 deal on these attractive planters, which are so much nicer than the plastic pots that came with the last fuchsias. They really add a lot of interest to the front porch.
Much more attractive than the old ones
We have been wanting to grow some herbs and veggies along the front of the garage, so I fashioned some planters out of a pile of fence boards I had left over from a section of fence we took down last year. The front section of fence between us and our neigbors yard had been flopping over, and we all agreed that it was unnecessary to leave in place, as the vegetation creates good screening anyway.
I am always happy when we actually complete a reuse project, as I’m very good at piling up the materials, but my track record of actually using them is pretty bad. Most times I end up giving away the materials to reclaim some space. These boxes are pretty simple, but I’m happy with them.
Prototype
Planters^3
You may recall that last September we were kind of forced into putting the siding on the kitchen wall by our re-fi. Although one might argue that 7 years was plenty of time to get that done, we still weren’t ready to do it. With pain comes gain, though, and it’s nice after-the-fact to have an awful project completed. Well, sort of completed since it still needs paint.
Last weekend we started painting. These grooved shingles are actually very tedious to brush, so I’ve been tempted to drag out the sprayer, but it just doesn’t feel worth it unless you’re going to be doing a large area. The wall with the lap siding is very easy to paint, so that kind of makes up for it. There should be more to see in the coming weeks…
Last bit of the old look
I’m writing this post from the future and back-dating it, because I realized that we had never shown a picture of the back after tearing it open and re-siding it. Here’s how it looks with the new cedar shingles. We did not have enough of the original lap siding to go around, so we opted to make the back unique and go with cedar shingles. It doesn’t look as jarring as if we had done it on the side of the kitchen, where it would have contrasted with the dining room wall. We always like shingle-clad bungalows, so it looks pretty good back here. If you want to jump ahead, we did eventually start painting it.
Wow!
I had a little time over the weekend to start working on the shingles for the back wall. It’s the type of project that I visualize as being very quick and easy, but of course, it’s not. On every row I was reminded of every non-plumb surface on our house and had to deal with the almost-but-not-quite-right angles of cedar shingles. It should look great once it’s all painted, although it’s taking me a bit of time to get used having siding back there, having shingles instead of lap and having the corner trim, which is a new detail we had to add to be able to cleanly mate up the disparate siding materials.
Normally I like shingle courses spaced a little tighter, but having them larger is not only saving us a ton of $$, but it also sort of mirrors the unusually large exposure of our lap siding on the rest of the house. Lastly, the 11″ spacing was the only way I could work out to keep each electrical box within a single course. I didn’t want to have to put in the big pieces of wood that often surround lights and switches on newer houses. In the same spirit as removing all the conduit and sinking everything into the wall, I’m trying to make it all look less cluttered.
Looking like a real house now...
Although this weekend was a bit too rainy to get deep into the railing and post replacement, I did take time this afternoon to fabricate the new railings. The existing porch and step railings appear to have been homemade from 2x4s, so I ripped and sanded these to match. I also improved the design a bit by creating a channel to recess the top of the balusters, as well as adding a drip groove.
Apparently, I don't own a dado blade set. Also, I'm sure I'd be too lazy to ever swap it in and out anyway, so I just improvise...
I hadn’t yet managed to take my obligatory week “off” to work on the house, so I scheduled it for last week. On the Wednesday prior, I got a call from our mortgage broker saying that the underwriter at the bank was freaking out about our exposed plywood siding on the kitchen. They wouldn’t close the loan (scheduled for 6 days later) with it in that condition. I told him “no way,” that we were going to have to walk away from the deal, since finishing that was going to be a big, complicated mess that we weren’t prepared to do at this time. While it was ugly, the deep overhangs of our house did a really good job of protecting it from the weather, so I thought it was a ridiculous requirement. Anyway, after Stephanie and I talked it over that night, we decided that it made sense to go ahead and try to finish the siding, since we would be losing nearly $500 in our wasted appraisal, not to mention the $350 in extra interest that were were paying each month.
Now for some of the back story to help explain why we weren’t too excited about taking on this project and kept deferring it. First, here’s a picture (taken for my dad, so he could create our landscape plan), which shows the area in question. Yeah, exposed plywood isn’t the best idea, but it really doesn’t look bad considering that it’s been that way for 7 years!
One of these things is not like the others
When we moved into our house, the front railings looked this:
A little mildew, but not too bad...
After about one year, we found that they had rotted out. Like so many things done by our previous owner, I’m sure it was fixed up with a nice coat of paint just before we bought the house. For a long time we got by with one railing, but it’s long since given up its ghost as well. I was supposed to be replacing all of this last week when I was taking time off of work, but a certain other thing got in the way. The goal is still to get these in place and painted before the winter rains start.
One railing and pot removed, so the one remaining is the "good" one
There is seriously no wood left in that thing!!
It actually is more of a present for ourselves, but shhh….don’t tell the house. It turns 100 this year, and it’s a little sensitive about the whole thing. Sure, everyone says that the 100′s are the new 80′s, but it’s still feeling a bit old.
We bid on an artistic rendering of a home at Ginger’s preschool auction fundraiser a couple of weeks ago. I’ve always thought that these were cool, but it’s not something that we ever got around to doing (how can we spend money on a picture of our house when the actual thing still wants to suck every cent it can out of our bank account?). Well the auction gave us a great excuse to have it done, and we’re pretty excited to have the sketch. The artist, Ken, did a great job, and he was really pleasant to work with. We wanted to give him a mention on our site in case anyone is interested in having something like this done for their own home. As you can see, he does nice work.
Sketch by Ken Quinlan-Pierce
Big holes in the roof happened. No, not those kind…the good ones. After weathering multiple seasons with a leaky patio roof, we finally bit the bullet and had it replaced. Additional benefits of having it done included making it strong enough to walk on for cleaning and having those big holes (aka skylights) added. While the huge cover has been great to have in the rainy season (although the leaks kind of defeated the point), it’s massive footprint (22×28′) created a LOT of shade. And while the structure of the roof was really well done, the sheeting, chintzy, poorly-supported aluminum panels, meant that it was incredibly difficult to walk on top of the roof. We now have a solid 3/4″ surface that will make it really easy to sweep off once or twice a year. Or every four years, whichever the case may be.
I had intended to purchase a couple of moderately sized skylights, say 2′x4′, but the roofer we used had a much better suggestion. He came up with the idea of framing out 4×12′ boxes, which then could be covered with a single sheet of polycarbonate. By running the panels under the eaves and all the way back to the house, no flashing would be necessary at the top, and by extension, no leaks should ever develop. Another perk of doing it this way was that for the same $$ as what we would have paid for 16 square feet of skylights, we ended up with at least 80 square feet! The patio is now WAY brighter, and we are also getting much more light into our kitchen and family room. A win-win.
Pile of old aluminum panels
Since the roofers left things half-done during the rainiest day on record, I had to create an aqueduct to channel all the runoff
LIGHT!
View from above
This is what it looked like a few years ago, when I had to cut the hole for the upstairs drywall. The roof would then spend the next 3 years being covered with a (barely effective) blue tarp.
