Welcome Home!

Here's our new front door area with the new color, new mailbox, light, house numbers and welcome mat. Welcome home!

House Painting Done

Here are some shots of the house painted, with door color too :) I'll take a final picture of the front door once the new light, house numbers and mailbox go up. The color looks more yellow or more almond/beige depending on how the sunlight is hitting it. I like the door color a lot. I think it's a really warm red that isn't too dark or too orange. We're also happy to have the oil tank slightly camouflaged and not quite as noticeable.

House Painted!!

Well, it's not quite done. This is the first coat- I think they are doing 2, and it's not 100% dry, so the color may shift slightly, but I couldn't wait to post! I'm still processing. My house has been that sad grey (and various others) for so long! Seriously, I'm going to have to be careful giving people directions now, I'm so used to saying "it's the grey ranch". Woah.

I can't see out my windows!

There is a new law in Mass. that if a house is built before 1972 (or something close, I forget) you have to treat it as if there is lead paint unless it's been certified that there is not. This means that before the guys started scraping and sanding to prep the house for paint, they had to tape up all our windows and doors, and add tarp everywhere to catch all the chips and not let anything get into the house. It is very weird being in the house today and not seeing out the windows. But I'm super excited to have the three paint color samples we chose up in the front! The picture doesn't show the differences very well, and honestly, when Erik gets home, he probably won't see much difference either ;) But I do! The painter told me which one he likes best, and the contractor gave me his opinion. Now I just have to decide. Keagan just keeps saying "I want yellow!"

Prepping for Paint

The painters were here today to replace some of the rotten trim pieces and power wash the house. You can see how much of the old paint chipped off with the power washing. Yikes!

Exterior painting in the works!

I'm psyched to report that we'll be getting a contract soon for the exterior paint job! Our contractor was here with his painter to look around and we got a preliminary estimate which we agreed with and he's writing up the paper work! There is a new law that every house built before 1974 (I think) needs to be painted with a contractor who has been certified to handle lead contamination, which basically involves tarping and collecting all the paint chips from scraping, and keeping the kids out of the area while it's done. Not a big deal, and our contractor is certified to do it. It's never simple, is it?
Soon, I will get to pick colors :) That's the best part, right? I can't wait to have our house looking nice from the outside. I will post more info and colors as things get going.

Roof Work Begins!

60s degrees and sunny today, so our contractor made the call to do the roof! Guys were here a little after 7am and made pretty quick work of pulling off the old roof. I have been slightly afraid of hearing someone fall through it all morning (I never take anything for granted with that addition part of the house!), but so far so good!

Trees Gone!

In addition to our siding and roofing projects, we finally decided to get rid of some dead trees around the house. Can you see anything missing in this picture???

No more dead pear tree!! Yippeee! I was so excited the first Summer we were here when this tree gave us 3 pears. Sadly, that was the last year anything live came from it. We've just been dragging our feet about removing it every since, but it's been such an eyesore I just couldn't take it anymore!

Here are the tree guys shoving the dead elm out front in their chipper. They don't food around. One guy just grabbed their (small, I thought) chainsaw, made two cuts and shoved the thing over and it went BOOM! onto the road, with branches flying everywhere! It was VERY dead and VERY dry. Pretty spectacular to watch, but they had it all cleaned up in no time. I actually think it's the cleanest that corner of the yard as ever been. The picture was taken from the safety of the front couch.


Here's Keagan inspecting the stump afterwards.

Left side finished shot and roof supplies arrive!

Ok, so this left side shot is about 2 months late... sorry! But it looks sooooo much better compared to before. Once it's all painted the same color it will be fantastic.


Also, the roof supplies were delivered! That big stack is the 2 inch foam insulation. Finally _some_ insulation on the back addition. Seriously, it is COLD back there in the winter. Hopefully this will help! We're just waiting for a good forecast for a couple days so they can get it done.

Left side nearly done!

The guys popped the window out and redid the ply wood for the left side of the house and put the window back. The new siding it going up. This brown color is just the pre-primed color it comes in, not the finished color of the house (which will be repainted in the Spring). And yes, you see there are two different kinds of siding on this side- it's the way they did it when they did the addition and again, we decided to just redo what was there rather than re-side the whole front or the whole back to match these fixed spots. But the really nice thing about the fixed left side now is they have leveled the back addition with the front original house. The guys that did the addition didn't get it flush with the original house and so they had to do these funky things with the trim and roof line, hence the hole forming and rotting. Once it's all painted the same color, it won't look so bad. The right side is also nearly done, just a few little spots they are still filling in over there.

Both sides revealed

Sammy had a big day today. More work on the right side- the new siding (pine shakes) are going up where they took the old ones down. The rest on that side are just improperly painted, which is why they are peeling, they aren't rotten. Our house actually has 3 different types of siding, and we are just replacing things to match- not doing the whole house over in one type. They also put a nice new horizontal board (fascia) under the roof line to replace the totally rotten one. Yeay! They put up some shingles on the roof just above that, but those are temporary until they do the whole back half of the roof over. Actually, we had those extra shingles in our storage room. It's just to protect everything because it might be a while before they start the roofing process, what with snow covering the whole roof right now and all.
Then they got started on the left side and opened up the whole wall! He did notice some ants in one location (where the wetness was concentrated) but said they were pretty dormant with it being so cold and that they hadn't yet started to destroy things- so we caught it just in time! The studs going down the wall are in good shape and they are going to put new ply wood up and tyvek it and get the old house and new(er) addition to finally match up right. They need to briefly pull the big window out tomorrow to properly flash things as they get the new plywood in, so it's just covered in tarp for tonight! A bit brisk, but we'll survive. Can't wait to see how good that side is going to look!

Insurance and New Door

Keagan said today "Mommy, we have a lot of vehicles here." We had 3 pickup trucks for the contractors, our two cars (Erik was home), and a blue sedan belonging to our insurance adjuster. It was a productive day! And it turns out, our contractor has done other jobs which involved this insurance adjuster- so they got along well and I had the adjuster telling me what a good contractor I had because he really wanted to do things "the right way." I am happy to report that he went back to the insurance office and wrote up a quote and said our check should be in the mail tomorrow! Wohoo! We don't know exactly what amount it will be for, but it was a surprise to us that we qualified for anything (it's under a "hidden rot" allowance) so we are super grateful that our contractor suggested getting in touch with our insurance company in the first place! So far, we love this guy.
Another exciting addition today was a new side door! The picture shows if from inside the storage room. This is exciting because 1) the old door had about a 1 inch gap at the bottom to the outside 2) the old door's paint was all chipped on the outside and looked terrible and 3) we didn't have keys for the old door because the previous owners didn't give them to us and we never got around to calling a locksmith for it. So yeay for new doors with working locks and insurance adjusters!

Sammy's Facelift Begins!

Keagan has named our house Sammy. He calls him by name and says goodbye to him every time we leave. He worries that he gets lonely when we leave too - but we tell him Willow keeps him company. This affection towards the house is adorable, but is also making Keagan very nervous about what the "workermen" are doing to him. We had a long talk about wood rot this morning.

So here's what's going on: The person who put the back addition on this house was an interior plasterer by trade (which is why we have so many textured walls- fun to paint... not!) and he got a few of his buddies together to build it. It's basically ALL WRONG. The interior is wrong, the exterior is rotting and oh yeah, there is no insulation in the roof job. Pretty awesome. We have been neglecting the exterior (other than all new windows and doors when we first moved in) in favor of the kitchen and bathroom job last year, but now it is time. We hired what we believe to be (and so does everyone else who has hired him according to Angie's List) a good contractor who has met with us several times for hours at a time to investigate what is going on and we've broken it down into a couple jobs. 1) The rot on the right side of the house, as your facing the house.


































2) The hole on the left side of the house as you're facing the house







3) The roof... sigh...


4) A new paint job, but that waits till Spring.


Today they began on the rotting issue on the right side of the house. Keagan and I went out during Torin's nap and brought them a table with coffee, water and some banana muffins he made for them this morning. We talked about Sammy and how Keagan thinks it was dinosaurs who took bites out of him, and that he workers were like "house doctors" and Keagan is feeling much better about the whole thing. The guys are really great with Keagan- one reason why I felt comfortable hiring them. It may seem like that isn't what they are here for, but I am home with the boys all day and need to feel comfortable with these men at my house, so to me, it is an important criteria and these guys fit the bill from day one.
























And this is Big Bertha, our huge dumpster (which is miraculously Keagan's favorite color, Yellow).