Catching Up With Lindsay

Here are some photos from when Lindsay was staying with us last month on the weekends.

Home Projects #3 & 4: Painting and Landscaping

Home improvement project #3 was to paint the house. As with all the projects, I spent a lot of time talking with contractors and hashing out bids. Even with some of the hiccups on the garage we ended up going with the same company - although it was a different crew. They replaced a lot of rotten wood, put in new larger soffit vents, and boarded up our gable vents (which is evidently what you're supposed to do if you have ridge vents on your roof).

We spent a lot of time picking out paint colors. We picked some colors and were ready to go with them and then panicked the day the painters showed up. Helen went out and picked up several more colors and with the help of Cheryl, the painting company owner, we applied several different color scheme samples on the house and stood back and evaluated them. We wanted the paint scheme to be more "craftsman-like" to show off our new stone steps and walkways. In the end we went back to the original colors, but were concerned that the base color would not be dark enough. The base color ended up looking much nicer once it was applied and accented with the trim colors. We were very happy with the job and thought that the colors really worked well with our new steps\walkways and transformed the look of our house to the "craftsman" feel we were going for.

Home improvement project #4 was landscaping. When I was originally talking to Mike, the owner, of the company that did the steps, walkways, and landscaping, he sensed that I was all over the place and recommended a landscape designer. The designer, Chris, axed the idea of a front porch we were leaning towards and said that we would get more bang for the buck with a nice entryway and landscaping. He put together a plan for us that we were very happy with. We waited to install the landscaping until after the painters were done so that they wouldn't trample everything. The landscaping really pulled it all together. We've been getting lots of compliments from neighbors who, like us, think it was an incredible transformation.

There's still a few things remaining: a real wood column (the beam there now is just a support), landscape lighting, and sealing the walkways to give them a deeper richer look. We're in the home stretch now.

Home Project #2 (Install): New Landing, Steps, Walkways

Extending the landing and footing for new steps

New paver walkway and steps

New paver walkway from garage entry door to back porch

Finished steps and house painting in progress

Our front door landing was settling and pulling away from the house, there was rotten wood behind it, and the stucco covering required constant patching. Also, we never liked how our landing and steps were recessed behind the garage wall. We wanted to extend the steps and flare them out into the yard for a more welcoming entry way.

The new landing and steps turned out great. The job was very labor intensive, loud, and dirty as the crew did a lot of stone cutting. The dust and debris were everywhere, but in the end we were very happy. We had planned that the landing extension be on the same level as the existing landing, but I came home one night to check out the progress and noticed that the extension was 4-6 inches lower. The more I looked at it the more I liked it. I called the contractor and they said that they had just run out of material, but still planned to raise the extension. I told them to leave it like it was and make the landing multi-level, which led to the railing stepping down as well. It was a really nice effect. We had also planned to do iron railing, but worked out the stone railing on the fly and it turned out great.

Home Project #2 (Demo): New Landing, Steps, Walkways

Our house before

Cutting into the driveway and demo of old sidewalk

Cutting out the new meandering walkway

Rotten woodwork beneath the old front door landing

After the demo

Home project number 2 was to fix the sagging front door landing, extend the steps, and replace the old sidewalks with nice walkways. We agreed to do the job on Sunday night and the next morning about 5 am our whole street was awoken by the sounds of a big construction dumpster being unloaded in front of our house. A crew of about 8 guys showed up and demolished everything and cut out the new walkway paths in a single day - with sledge hammers and shovels. The only power tool was the saw to make the curved cut in the driveway. We were impressed.

Home Project #1: The Garage

I've been too busy to blog lately. One of the reasons is that I've been obsessed with the home improvement projects we've undertaken. The first project was to have the garage painted - floor and all. There were a number of drywall repairs from things like the bathtub leaking above, the water heater busting, and various wear and tear. We also had all the wood trim stain freshened up.

[Edit: I guess, technically the garage is the second project - cutting the trees down was the first]

I'm, evidently, pretty picky as the crew that painted the garage let me know. I think they estimated 2-3 days and it took 5 days. I told them up front that I wanted it to look like new - like new construction. After about the 3rd day, we could tell that the crew wanted to tie things up, but we were persistent about imperfections that we saw. Overall we were happy with the results, but disappointed that we had to be the bad guy and push the crew to finish the job right.

All our stuff was strewn on our driveway for a week and even when the job was finished, for weeks we had to leave our cars on the driveway until the tires cooled so that the hot rubber on the tires wouldn't ruin the new epoxy paint on the floor.

The epoxy floors turned out OK. They probably should have gotten 2 coats, but the application process is to throw on the little decorative specks while the paint is wet, so the crew threw on the specks and we didn't realize until the next day that the coverage wasn't as good as we had hoped. Oh well. It still looks really nice. Now when Helen tells me to just go live in the garage - I might take her up on it.