On the B Side

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, painting of the second side of the house was on the agenda for this year...

Mission accomplished! So happy for progress! :)

I'm also pretty glad that my arms get the winter to recover from the scraping/painting marathon, before we get back to it next year!

Take it Outside

Finally back to working on the house, and have some outside progress to reveal! 

A little reminder, here's what the front side looked like when I moved in (2009):

 

A major improvement (the deck!) was made the following summer, and now this:

We're finally in the process of repainting the siding, and changing it to the grey colour I'd envisioned all along (Behr's Pewter Ring), and I LOVE IT.  So much.  Love how the thick white trim pops now.

Only the front side is painted so far (hence the strategically angled pics!), but we're hoping to get a second side done this year before it gets too cold, and then finish up next summer (basically only two sides can be seen by anyone who isn't trespassing in the yard, so I'm ok with waiting to finish!).

Don't mind the ugly 'under the deck' view.  I still haven't figured out what to put there to screen it - I really don't want to resort to boring lattice, but haven't come up with a DIY alternative yet.  Suggestions are welcome! :)

Tiny Update & Happy New Year!

Now that most of the holiday hubbub is over, it occurred to me that I never did follow up about the front of my house.  I told you about finishing the deck, but at that point that awful front wall was still bare and ugly.  So just to prove I'm not a total slacker (even though I kinda am, since I took so long to post about it)...
 

Ta da!  I finally caught a break in the foul Fall weather (before Winter set in for good) and got it primed and painted.  MUCH better!

And in case you're wondering what all the fuss was about, here's what it looked like before (and why I had to bump it to the top of my to-do list!):

peeling paint

someone's brilliant attempt to cover missing paint with caulk. WITH THEIR FINGERS.

 

Oh, and while I was at it, I finally decided to just throw caution to the wind and remove this 'who-knows-what-it's-for-or-why-it's-there' piece of awesomeness:

And nobody died.


Oh yeah, Happy New Year!

For My Dad: A Deck-laration

O happy day, it's finally finished!!

As I think I've mentioned before, I don't usually like to write about unfinished projects. And currently the front of my house is a bit of a mess as I work to scrape (and repaint, before it gets too cold) a section of it. But at long last, the new front deck is finished, and I've had a special request from Dad (without whom this deck would never have been possible!) to post pics of this project that's taken up much of the past two months of both our lives.
And I can't really argue with him - after so much hard work, it's time to show off the fruits of our labour!

In case you need a refresher, here's what the front looked like when I bought the house:

notice the original deck: tiny, rotten, and utterly useless

I wrote about a bit of an update a year ago (at the conclusion of another long project with Dad), and (drumroll please!) here's how it looks today:

please disregard the unpainted wall! :)

Ooooh... Ahhhhhh....You should see it at night, when light from inside shines out through the slats. Love it!

Since I moved in, three new houses have been built beside mine (all are to the right in the above picture), so one goal with the deck was to maintain a bit of privacy, so that I'll actually want to use this new outdoor space. (It's a good size - the main part is about 9'x11' - so I want to enjoy it!) Another goal was not to look too 'cookie-cutter', or like all the boring decks on new builds like the ones next door. To that end, I designed a railing that I think is a bit more modern and unique, and does a great job of screening the deck from the street and nearby houses.

Obviously I've still got lots of landscaping and clean-up to do (after that wall gets painted!), but this was another major step in converting what used to be the back of the house into a proper front entry. Plans for next year include moving the front door - we positioned the new stairs right in front of where I want it to go!

So, Dad: once again thank you. I learned a lot, and definitely couldn't have done it without you! And now that we're done, you've got to admit - it was at least a little bit fun, right?! :)  Love you!

As for everyone else, what do you think? I really like that it looks unique, but do you think anyone else will (ie. future owners of my home)?  Does it look more like the front of a house now?

Sneak Peek

Here's a glimpse of the 'little' project that took over my life about a month or so ago...

lumber yard? or front yard?

progress!

Fingers crossed that by the end of the coming long weekend, the end of this project will also be in sight!  

 

Garbage Day (2nd Annual?)

Hey, look what I just found in the woods and brook beside my house:

Ok, ok, I know - another boring post about garbage.  But here's my point:  People who litter are selfish and lazy.  Please don't be one of them.

Post Posts Post

Ok, I'm going to warn you upfront, this is going to be a long one. But it was a long (long looooong LONG) time coming, and a really big deal, so please bear with me.
:)

I have spent an awful lot of time over the past several months in my front yard. On the front of the house there's a little 'entryway' that sticks out from the rest of the house, and in the decades since it was built, it has been supported on two 4x4 angled wood beams set into little pockets in the foundation. Not smart. The beams (I now know) were pretty rotten, and the entryway had sagged significantly over time.

So, to keep this little slice of square footage from falling off the side of my house entirely, it was necessary to fix the problem (it also had to be done before a number of other projects - like painting and patching holes in the walls inside - since jacking it up was likely to cause more damage anyway).

So here we go. First came the digging of the giant holes, into which the concrete forms would be placed. Fortunately, with the new house being built next door, I was able to take advantage of the excavation crew working there, and didn't have to dig these by hand(!):

(two holes, each four feet deep, and at least two feet around)

Once these were dug, I couldn't use my front door anymore because the excavators had to remove the deck/stair supports in order to dig the holes.

Next, I placed the forms (bigfoots and sonotubes) in the holes, and with the generous help of the builders/neighbours next door, shovelled the dirt back in around them. Unfortunately, a few days later and before I could get the concrete into the forms, we had a huge rainstorm that moved them, which meant digging the whole thing out again(!), re-positioning them, and shovelling all that dirt back in. Is it any wonder this entire process took a few months??

Anyway, I don't really want to think about all that (ever again!) so here they are after the concrete was finally mixed and poured:

(notice those old angled beams I mentioned - the white and the navy ones,
not that random board leaning against the wall)

Anyway, then the jacking to correct the sag began. It was determined that we couldn't do it all in one shot, but had to do it over a couple of weeks (makes sense when you think about it - the floor probably took 50+ years to get to where it was).

And (Hallelujah), at long last, this past weekend the jacking was completed and the permanent posts were put in place. Check it out:

I know, gorgeous, right? :) While I'd much rather have spent the past couple months decorating the interior, this was important stuff. I now have a safe structure - and this paved the way for me to get going on all that inside stuff I've been thinking about all summer!

Oh yeah, and as an added bonus - I can now use my front door again! This stairway/deck is temporary - just to get me through the winter. I figure I can use that time to figure out exactly what I want to do to the front of the house next summer - what size deck to build, whether or not to move the door around to the front, etc. So we reused the old stair framework, but made it nice and sturdy with new deck boards and supports:


Oh, do me a favour and please just ignore that ghetto extension cord draped across the front of my house - the neighbours need power for a few days and I don't have an outside outlet. A little electricity's the least I can offer in return for all the hours they spent shovelling dirt into those giant holes!

And one last thing. Dad, there is NO way I could have done this without your help. Through every step of this process, you were there. 'Thank you' does not seem sufficient. But thank you.

Take a Number

The originals that came with the house:

But now that I've got a ladder (thanks, Kijiji!)...

I was finally able to put up my fab new house numbers! They're floating numbers, but (thanks to some awesome cutting and drilling help from a friend) I mounted them on a piece of reclaimed (aka garbage) acrylic which I frosted up just for the occasion.

LOVE them! They're just the first step in overhauling the look of the front of the house (remember this post?), so stay tuned!

HGTV - Design Dilemma

On a whim, I emailed HGTV a few months ago when they were looking for outdoor design dilemmas... Well guess what? They featured my 'dilemma' (and my house) on their website this week!

Have a look:

http://www.hgtv.ca/BLOG/archive/2009/08/19/outdoor-design-dilemma-with-carson-arthur-when-back-of-the-house-is-actually-the-front.aspx

What do you think of their suggestions?

Demo Day

Today's pics aren't so much 'Before and After' as 'Before and During', because in this case, the 'After' is going to take awhile. But the progress was gratifying, so I thought I'd put up some pics!

My house came with an ill-made, rotten, useless front deck. Exhibit A:


Your eyes aren't deceiving you, those railings are at approximately knee-height. The only way the deck's been useful since I moved in is as a surface to paint on, that's why you might've noticed that smattering of red paint over the peeling blue.

Anyhow, it had to go, to make way for lots of change, including a new deck and stairs (eventually), although there's some bigger 'structural' stuff I need to take care of first.

But here's the result of my afternoon's labours. The term 'brute strength' comes to mind, although it helped that a lot of the wood was rotten! :)


So, as I said, not pretty yet, but on it's way! As for me, I'm well on my way to a nap. Today's the kind of day I wish I had a man's upper body strength, because that wore me out!

Garbage Day

On a Saturday not so long ago, I decided to tackle cleaning up the garbage on and around my property - because as excited as I am about living in my new house, the constant sight of garbage was a total buzz-kill!

After spending my first weeks in the house picking all of the dime- to plate-sized pieces of roof shingles out of my lawn (at least three garbage bags full, because apparently the people who got this place ready to sell weren't aware that you can RENT A DUMPSTER rather than just tossing all of your garbage on the ground!!) I was tired of constantly glimpsing all the garbage in the woods and small ravine next to my house.

Technically, it's not even my property, but since no one else was going to do it, and I'm the one who has to look at it every day, it had to go!

Here's a shot of what I pulled out of the woods that day:


Notable 'finds' included two lawn chairs, hockey stick, scooter, computer, two garbage bags full of rusted out empty paint cans (!), aluminum pot, mop, picture frame, and more plastic plant pots than I could count.

I even managed to find a couple of 'freebies' I can actually use - a perfectly good garbage can (complete with cover), and a length of vinyl eaves trough. And let me just say that after the expense of buying a house, I'm happy not to have to buy a garbage can. Plus, it's at least a small compensation for hauling all of that stuff up out of the woods!

But here is my question, the one I kept asking myself the whole time I was amassing the large pile pictured above: What the heck is WRONG with people?!?!!? The city comes by and picks up our garbage every two weeks - all you have to do is take it to the curb. Why on EARTH would you throw it all into the woods?!? That's just gross.

BUT, now my view is neat and clean, so I'm glad I did it.