The last two months has seen some good progress at the house, notwithstanding the lack of posts to this blog. Much of late February / early March was spent cleaning up all the construction debris strewn around the yard as it appeared from under the freakish 70" of snow that covered the ground this winter. I'm still awaiting a bill for the haul away (which will tell me the tonnage we discarded), however I filled most of a 21 cubic yard container with demo material from our side room, cottage, and siding. It pained me to create so much rubbish; but we donated as many good doors, sinks, and windows as we could to the Habitat Store.
The other big area of improvement for April has been the front porch. Easter weekend, when the concrete slab in the side room wasn't quite ready to be painted, we decided to paint the brick at the front of the house. We had always intended to paint the brick, Emili just bumped it up on the list when we couldn't paint the side room (due to drying time of the concrete). Within a few hours, the house looked transformed (again); from two colors and two materials to a single color. Now we just have to paint the brick on the other three sides!
Newly painted brick at the front of the house.
The other major undertaking at the front porch area was painting the porch itself. The contractors finished the front porch area just before we received our first 24" storm of the season in December. After the storm, it didn't get out of 30 degrees for two months making painting impossible. When the weather finally warmed, some of the floor boards, especially at the perimeter of the porch, had "cupped" a bit. As part of the final punchlist (which was finished last week!), the contractor belt-sanded the front before we painted it.
View of the sanded deck, prior to painting,
from within the enclosed porch.
Another view of the porch with plastic around it,
intended to keep the pollen off it while we painted.
Once the sanding was done, we stapled plastic around the outside in order to keep pollen and leaves off the porch while we added 3 coats of paint. It was pretty fun to work inside of the plastic and we definitely saw a few people drive by slower than normal as if to ponder what the heck we were doing. This weekend brings good weather and goals of mulch, gardening, and possibly finishing the floor in the family room.
Finished floor on the porch.
Mulch pile. Hopefully I'll make some headway this weekend!
Posts
