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Monday, May 1, 2017

Repairs R Us

It certainly doesn't seem like almost 4 years since I posted last. A lot of things going on and the blogging gets left behind at times.

So we're working on refinancing the house for various reasons. When the appraiser came out to do the inspection there were a couple of areas that were noted as needing attention. I was well aware that these areas needed to be fixed- I just didn't realize how long I've been putting it off!




I picked up the materials I would need and spent the first day priming both sides of the siding panels and all of the trim pieces. If you've ever painted this rough-cut siding with the grooves in it you will appreciate what a pain in the butt it can. Last time I did the garage end of the house, I spent an entire day priming and painting the panels with a brush and roller. This time I approached things a little bit differently- I got one of the airless paint sprayers as a gift for Christmas. That cut my total painting time down by 85%! I love that sprayer :) Once you're used to it, you can cover huge areas effectively in very little time. I highly recommend the sprayer.




First step was to pull the soffit so that I could remove the top panels since they overlap the bottom ones. Then I removed the window. The pic on the right shows the boards I put up inside to keep the cats in while I was working on this. Next, the siding was taken off.

 Same process on the smaller area. You can see where the previous owner simply added additional paneling over the old screen porch to close it in.




New panels in place on both parts of the back area. While I had the bottom pieces of wood off of the area in the pic on the right, I put in flashing and sealed it down solidly to keep rain water from running into the computer room as it had been doing for ages. There is now a single piece of flashing that runs from the cement blocks on the left all the way to the end of the cement on the right. I shouldn't have any water issues for many, many years now.




Replaced the frame on the garage door ( a bit of rot on the bottom edges, so why not fix it now?) and re-installed the window. Framed out the window, caulked and painted it all.


I then reinstalled the soffit, trim, etc. Painted the remaining areas to complete this side.


Next I moved on to the rear of the house. There was one small spot on the bottom right corner under that window which needed replacing. Pulled the old trim board and the offending panel, put in new ones and painted it all. Then entire house is DONE!

I took 4 days off of work to do this project, but things didn't happen the way I planned it. Ended up working on two of those days, but the total time on the project was still only 4 full days working by myself. It's nice to have it completed.