House Painting has Begun!

It was exciting to see the new color starting to go up on the house!

The trim and accent colors aren't up yet.. they just got the body of the house done on the front and both sides.  The back & extension haven't been started on yet.  I can't wait to see that & how the old & new sections of the house finally tie together!

If you look closely, you can see the front porch ceiling is now finished with the primer & two coats of paint.  We LOVE how that came out.

Another thing that got done was trimming the lilac bush that's on the front corner of the house.  The photo above shows it with the trimming complete.   It had to be done to allow the painters easy access to the porch railings.

Priming the House

With the scraping and carpentry done on the house, the painters sanded and then power washed the house.  The next day we came home to spots of a new blue!

Anywhere that the wood was exposed from the scraping & sanding, got covered with an oil based primer.  

They also primed the porch ceiling.  This hadn't been painted at all, as you can see in this post.  We went with a traditional light blue for this.

The primer on the house looked like a Wedgwood blue- but the painter said it's just about 60% the saturation that the final color will be.

The siding on the new extension was built with boards that were already primed.

They've been spending some time back there caulking though.

The well house got primed too, although there's still some carpentry work that needs to be completed, so they are going to hold off on the actual painting on that building.  

As mentioned yesterday, the garage still needs quite a bit more carpentry work on the back, so they aren't doing any priming on that yet.

Next up- the paint color will be revealed!

Siding Fixes

The scraped house was looking pretty rough!  The scraping continued on Saturday of Labor Day weekend, and on Monday we had a carpenter here to fix some boards that were cracked, sliding down, etc.  He was here for 4 hours and got the house done, and a little work done on the garage.

The white boards (on the old part of the house) are the ones that needed to be replaced...

6 boards on the driveway side

The road side of the house needed some more boards replaced because of the patch that we needed where the old kitchen stove was vented.  You can see the block of three boards next to the window below... and then there were four more boards in addition to that.

Happily, the front of the house didn't need ANY boards replaced, nor did any of the "old" part of the back of the house.

The garage needed four small boards on the front, where we installed the light fixtures (come to think of it, I don't think that I ever posted that the electrician finished that up!  Will have to fill that in later!)

The back of this garage needs a lot more work because of the amount of sun that it gets.  I think he said about 6 boards along the bottom will need replacement, plus the back window frames need additional work.  He was going to get additional supplies from the local lumberyard.

We're really pleased with the work this carpenter has done so far!  He showed up promptly at 8:00, as he said he would, and he got all of the above work done by Noon.  We'll be keeping his number handy for future projects! 

Scraping it down

August was the tentative start date for the exterior house painting.  I was thrilled when this stack of ladders showed up last week!

The next day, the scraping started. The sides of the house were worse than the front & back...

They started on the garage: 

And also started scraping the well house:

The biggest change is the shutters came down.

The shutters are purely decorative, plastic, and we definitely aren't putting these back up.

We are going to see how the house looks without shutters once the painting is done.

If we decide we want/need shutters, we'll get them made so that they are real, functioning,  properly sized, and historically accurate.  

Here's a before photo, with the fake shutters in place:

And here's with the shutters removed:

We've still got a couple of days of scraping, sanding, and power washing.  Plus the carpenter will be here on Tuesday to make some minor repairs on the well house where we removed some old lighting fixtures & the garage where a few clapboards are loose & a window needs fixing.  

The painter said it will be about two weeks total (that was before the hurricane was forecast... so we'll see how the weather goes!)

Well House- Working it out

The well house has been used mostly for a play area and storage space since we moved in.  We have been tossing around ideas of how we want to update & use it for the long term.

With the boys getting older, and focusing on sports more, we decided to make it into a little gym.

Now that the kitchen renovation is done, we decided to start working on putting it together.

The first step was to clean it out...  a lot easier said than done!  

We've moved most of this stuff out to go for a yard sale or to donate.  

My gold antique loveseat was moved into the parlor (I will update photos of that room soon!)

The secretary desk has been moved into the living room, but we need to re-veneer the front of the three drawers.  That will be a winter project!

My antique Lincoln couch is still in the corner out there.  Not ideal, but it needs to be re-upholstered, and I want to keep it safe & dry (and it is too heavy & long to move to the attic).   

There will be more updates to come... 

We've picked out the paint colors, but this past week has been too hot to be painting out there.

The rug is in good shape (we peeked underneath to see if there were hardwood floors, but unfortunately, it's just plywood sub-flooring)

For now, we've moved the exercise equipment in:

The built in shelves will provide some good storage in there.

Here's a list of what still needs to be done:

-painting

-re-run the electric

-install heating

-decorating 

-adding equipment

Happily, the boys have been out there using it already!  I still go to the real gym to do my group classes, but this gives me another option to get a workout in.  It's a lot of fun to work out with the kids!