The siding is up. Now we just have to do some filling, caulking, and
painting. I didn't do quite as good a job coping the trim board
around the stone as I would have liked, but it will work, and no one
will ever really be able to see it from the ground.
After doing some filling, here's how the curved trim board looked.
And here it is after a coat of paint.
I did some more filling on the curved board to try to hide the joint
better, then painted it again. These shots were also taken after
trimming the tree to get it away from the house a little more. You
can also see the new stone cap and animal guards on the chimney (I'll
try to get a better shot later).
I built a small platform to use for the siding and trim on the west
side of the chimney, pulled the siding and trim off, and tacked up
some flashing and housewrap.
For various reasons I didn't get much work done on the house today,
but we did get the siding panel in place. I hope to get the trim
boards installed this week, then we can remove the scaffold.
I installed the trim boards today including filling and caulking. The
weather is supposed to be nice again tomorrow, so I hope to finish
painting by tomorrow evening. Then the scaffolding can come down.
I've been working on the front of the house over the last 12 days, but
haven't taken many pictures. The trim and siding is finished now, and
I have the gutter up on the side porch and on the east side of the
chimney.
I also built a small platform to work on the windows above the front
entry.
Here's a close up shot of the second floor window on the west side of
the chimney, above the front entry. The rotting brick mould has been
replaced with Azek, most of the peeling caulk has been scraped off of
the brick, and there's at least one coat of paint on everthing. I
really need to start remembering to take more "before" pictures so the
improvement is more apparent.
Here are some shots of the window in the side of the garage. It may
not be too clear from these shots, but the opening in the exterior
brick veneer is slightly smaller than the window frame itself, so
these windows were installed from the inside. The window doesn't seem
to be held in by much and actually broke loose from one corner when I
was prying the brick mould off. Inside the garage, the trim around
the window came loose from the wall. I think it was just nailed ot
the window and held to the wall with caulk. I managed to get it
pushed back into place. We might eventually want to replace these
windows (completly, not just by putting in some vinyl inserts)
but I'm not sure where I would find modern windows that could fit in
these openings.
Some of the windows are fairly rotten. This is the second floor
window on the east side of the chimney. I chiseled off the rotten
portion back to where there was some solid wood and spliced on a
carefully crafted patch (part of a 2x4) then filled the gaps. It
should look OK once there is some paint on it.
The second floor window on the west side of the chimney was in better
shape so all I had to do was strip the paint and sand. This also
shows the replacement brick mould before it is fully painted. I had
to rip the brick mould to 1-1/2 inches (it comes 2 inches wide) so it
would fit between the brick and the storm window, which I did not
remove.
I installed brick mould on two more windows and have all five of them
painted at least once. And the scaffold is down. In this shot
you can also see the new gutter on the west side of the chimney.
Things are looking better.
Here's a shot of the garage window with the brick mould installed.
I'll have to do something to protect the sashes for winter. since I
dropped the storm window that was installed here. It was no great
loss, as it was in pretty rough shape..
Here's the first floor window on the west side of the entry way.
The new front of the house. We still need to work on the large
living room window on the first floor. Also, now that we've done all
this work, we're beginning to think that we should remove the aspen
tree since it is too close to the house and obscures the chimney.
Here are a couple of shots showing the newly repointed stone work at
the base of the chimney and the decorative brickwork on the upper part.
Before and after The before shot is from way before, when we were
first looking at the house more than four years ago.
Here's a shot of the backyard grass that I replaced earlier this
year. I hope that by next summer you won't be able to see the outline
of the newer grass in the slightly less new grass.
Oh, and this tree will give us some leaves to clean up in a week or
two.
Trick or treat?
I also spent some time today excavating for a concrete turnaround pad
at the side of the driveway and working on forms for a concrete walk
into the backyard behind the garage.
