9 newts, 2 kersone heaters, 5 rolls of moldy insulation & 1 jar of myster black liquid later...

9/30/07

...and the basement is cleared!

It was gross gross gross down there, but I just dug in and chucked it all out the window. Here are some before and afters. They depress me a little because it doesn't look that great after.

before ---------------> after



I didn't take good enough pictures of the 2 huge concrete/rock rubble piles that I had to throw out the window. You can sort of see them behind the columns on the before pics.




And here's all that trash outside the window and we actually found a window down there that fits this frame! Score! There are actually about 10 trash bags there, even thought it looks like only 3.


Also, I made a very important discovery while down there. We thought our water heater was about to go because there is always a wet spot around it in the front. See:


Low and behold it is a PIPE right above that with a leaky connection. DOH! How we never saw that before, I have no idea.


Marc was very busy during this whole weekend working on finish trim for the back porch. (oh, my did I just say "finish" and "back porch" in the same sentence? No way!) He is trying to get it done so that the painters will paint it instead of us. He had to notch out this entire top board around every stinking rafter tail.

There are actually 2 boards up there, you just can't see it too clearly.

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Brackish

9/28/07

Here's some teasers of the newly brown brackets:


I love the dark brown, they still have to do the window sashes in the brown and the window trim in the light color, but still a HUGE improvement!

Oh, and does anyone get my dorky play-on-words with the title of this post? "Brackish", playing off of it's similarity of Bracket and insinuating that right now our house is like brackish water (a mix of salt and fresh) but it is a mix of nasty old and fresh new paint! I'm a dork.

To prove that, check out these AWESOME Grass-hair people that Marc's sister Julie got us for our anniversary! Aren't they the cutest ever?
Before..................................After!

Check it out, my lady has bangs!

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Try not to pee your pants...

9/26/07

...because that is what I was trying to do when I saw the paint colors ON the house!
They look a lot different in person, more gold and closer to each other.

I know there were a lot of skeptics (including the most of the painters) but I LOVE IT. It's bold, it's sorta "period" while being funky 70's, it's fresh and most of all... it's very not crack-house-y!



I promised myself I would hold off and just do a big "before and after" post, but honestly, I can't help myself. It's just too exciting. Finally, our house is not embarrassing and depressing! It looks like a real house!

They are starting the second coat tomorrow and then trim and windows. They should be all done by Monday. Marc mentioned postponing them a day so we can use the weekend to scrape the window frames, I'm not exaggerating at all when I say I almost burst into tears. He's such a trooper and has been doing by far the majority of the scraping, but if I have to be on the roof for one more thing, I just might throw myself off.

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Tuna Halloween Costume 2007

This is what happens when your husband works from home and his only coworker is your cat (who is named Tuna.)


p.s. Gerry please note that this is what Marc does during lunch when I can't come home. I think you need to call him more. He's lonely.

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Painting Day One

9/25/07

So they power washed yesterday, & it barely took any paint off. Unbelieveable!It looks like it is just flakes, but nooo! It is totally stuck on there. I'm starting to think it isn't even paint. I bet it is elmer's glue.

They did powerwash our front steps & walk. <-Pic It was gross before, and now it is clean. That also means now you can see the huge cracks. Oh well.

Marc just emailed and said there are 15 guys there scraping our house. Fun for them. I just want it done and the new color up there, but Marc is making me scrape porch posts and fix window sills every night. UGH.

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The Painters Are Coming! The Painters Are Coming!

9/24/07

I feel like a kid again. I'm ridiculously excited about getting our house painted. Like "Going-to-Disney-World" excited. Marc is nervous, I'm just glad to have some real change on the horizon and by that I mean I'm excited to have our house not be the ugliest, crackiest on the block.

This last week and weekend were jam-packed with painting prep. Sunday I got to go to Biltmore Estate with my grandma and aunt while Marc slaved away though!
Here's some pics of the work:

Here's Marc bending the metal flashing for the back of the kitchen wall... with our IKEA Pizza Cutter! HA!

Here it is put up. No more ants and rotten wood!

And here's the wood up on it and the trim!

Here's some miscellaneous repairs.
The watertable repairs, there are about 6 spots like this that we had to repair. They were mostly below windows, where people had obviously tried to stand on the ledge to get into the window. Nice.

And a spot by the chimney that we had to reside w/ wood.

The wood window sills were all rotten, so we put Bondo on them to smooth them and stop the rot. Maybe we should just get a spray gun and bondo the whole dang house.



Here is the exterior with Marc's glorious scraping.
And here it is after I took off the porch railings and the upper fascia boards (so you can see the rafter tails now). .
The fascia board where, by the way, infested with HUGE carpenter bees that would fly out and attack me. While I'm on the roof. I think the neighbors thought I was going to fall off the roof and die, because the bees would swarm and I would scream, drop my hammer and run to the other side of the roof. Nice. Good thing we OSHA isn't monitoring our work.

And here's something SCARIER than our house (imagine that!):
A HUGE SPIDER!
Seriously, HUGE. That is Marc's hand and if you don't know, Marc has big sausage fingers, so that spider is GIGANTIC! The body of it is the size of a nickel. Like it can't fit up your nose. And it could crawl into your mouth maybe, but it would have to bend it's legs and you would choke on it. Yeah, that is what I was thinking about when I was trying to sleep last night.
I just found out what kind of spider it is a Black and Yellow Argiope. Here is some info (It's not poisonous.)

So the painters are power washing today, then caulking and reglazing the windows. That will take a while, so I don't think they will get to painting this week at all. That's a bummer, but honestly, even the powerwashing has me all excited! Marc better warn them not to get the spider wet, because it might get mad and eat someone.

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Weekend of Madness: Sunday

9/17/07

I could barely believe that we had energy on Sunday, but after a quick trip to Brueggers for bagels and coffee, we got started.

1 We needed to finish the cedar shingling job on the southeast corner, but to do that, we had to repair the southeast corner itself. Lots of the wood boards were rotten and the sill itself was missing. Marc went to work on this.
I have to say, I get annoyed at how long it takes Marc to do stuff, but man, he does nice work! Look at how tight this corner is and the corner isn't even square!

2 Meanwhile, I had to hang out not on the roof with Marc to help him cut wood for the corner, so I got a bug up my butt and went a little crazy on the garden. It was getting seriously over-grown and dangerous. So I cleaned it up. I also moved the piles of broken pipes and brick/concrete chunks. No wonder my legs and back hurt today!


3 After that was all done, we climbed back onto the roof for hopefully the last time, to finish the shingles and dang, I must say, it does look GOOD to have clean, fresh shingles up there.
Monday night we have to repair the hole in the kitchen wall.. painting starts in only 7 days!

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Weekend of Madness: Saturday

The weather was so great this entire weekend, crisp, cool and sunny. Perfect!
1 We got busy bright and early, Marc went back to scraping the front porch. What a saint! Here is the final product. The wood is 85 years old and it looks brand new!

2 I was busy doing what I do best: DEMO! We needed to replace rotten boards at the base of the exterior kitchen wall. We have been dreading removing them, because we were scared that everything behind then would be rotten (ala the back porch fiasco). So I got busy with the crow bar and it's not as rotten as we thought! Still, some wood is bad, and there is a floor joist bearing on nothing, but all-in-all, workable. The ant population experience quite the genocide via Fantastik (we use it like ant killer spray), but they had to go! Here's the look:


You can see the rotten wood in these photos. Also, the white part is a plumbing pipe. No wonder the previous owner had issues with pipes freezing, they were uninsulated (the new pink stuff I did) and only 2" from the exterior!


3 This was a rough day and we were BEAT. We had a big steak dinner with a friend so that we could get some energy for Sunday's work. Don't I look sleepy?


This is also a great pic of our DISGUSTING kitchen. Nice urine-color sponge paint on the walls, no?

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Weekend of Madness: Friday

9/14/07

Friday, (my 1/2 day of work) and we kicked it into gear.

1 of course, by going to the hardware store & the lumber yard.

2 I tackled the upstairs windows: Success! (I have to say, these were easier than the downstairs. Some still had their cords & weights!)

In the right hand photo, you can also see traces left by The Paint Peeling Addict (aka Marc).

3 Meanwhile, Marc was scraping the front porch siding. He is THE MAN. I seriously cannot do this. I try to scrape and no paint comes off. I need to build some muscle mass.
What is the weird stuff on Marc's face you ask? It is his retaliation for me always NAGGING him to shave his beard. Klassy.
He loves it, as you can tell.

4 Anywho: Because the windows were easier, Marc was still scraping, and no one had called us to get a beer yet, I decided to seal the crack in the "scary room" aka upstairs bedroom. This is a crack between the wall and the chimney stack beside it. You can see daylight in the crack.





I did this with that "Great Stuff" (you can see the bottle in the window above).
While it is great, it's also hella sticky (duh). Of course, I never follow the directions on the bottle and wear gloves, so I got it all over my hands. It can only be removed by acetone which I had in handy-dandy polish remover form. Now I smell like I work in a nail salon.
Klassy all around.

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Weekend of Madness: The List

Painting Prep is getting into crunch time with only 10 days left until the painters come. We are having to do a Weekend of Madness to get it all done. Here is the list:


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