Light at the End of the Hallway

The door is here. The siding is on the trailer. The trim is up and painted... somewhat. 4th of July and we're all ready to go.

Last weekend we purchased the trim, painted the backsides, and installed some of it. Yesterday I painted the front sides of the few pieces that were up. Amazing how little gets done around here.

Forgive my curt text. Yesterday was tough. I was trying to catch some rays, but just couldn't manage to do it. The baby was having marathon feedings and it seemed every time I managed to get outside - clouds. And then, the icing on the disappointing 4th of july cake, I found a snake laying eggs under the living room rug.

Yup. I'm not scared of snakes, but it shocked my skin off. I was just walking through the living room when I stepped on a lump in the rug. I'm thinking - cat puke. Or something along those lines. So I lift the rug and there it is. I screamed and jumped back, but then got a grip and captured the thing in a tupperware.

Black snake with one orange stripe around its neck. And a freshly laid egg. There was a second egg some distance apart from the snake, which I threw out. When Mike got home I had him release the snake across the street by the herring run. But now I'm worried how many other eggs are under the rug... and how did the snake get in to start with?

We used to get them all the time before we had a basement - big snakes that Mike had to suck up with the shop vac. One of the main reasons we wanted a basement. Mike does not like snakes. I don't mind them. I'll even hold them if I have gloves on. But I do not like them under my rugs.

Anyway - so we'll be taking up the rug today. At some point, TJ will be over to help Mike get started on the siding and to install the door. I have to run out to Lowes and get a lockset. They have these nifty ones that let you change the lock to work with any key. It's so cool. You just stick in this special tool, stick in your old key, then stick in the new key and then that key opens the door. I have one on my french doors already, so one on the front door will mean I can use the same key for both doors and deadbolts. Highly convenient.

So take one last look at that old door.

And take one last look at the house front.

One last look at the french doors.

And hopefully I'll have some new pics later... they better be snake free. And maybe I'll have some color...

Mid-June?

Ok, so when did the calendar nearly pull June out from under me? With all the rain and cool weather, it's felt like a never-ending April/May around here. And we've been stagnating too.

But not this weekend. Sunday we began by finally installing the final ceiling fan in the upstairs office! (It's only been 2 or 3 years now...) Advertised as the "5-minute fan," we timed the entire process and found that it's more like the "half hour fan." But that's still great timing.


Then we had a serious siding discussion. As in, what else do we need to do to prepare for the job. I pointed out - hey - we're going to need to replace the front door. And hey - what about those screens for the french doors that we bought back over a year ago...

So Mike pulled the screens out from the garage attic. And wouldn't you know it, they were the wrong size... the screens we bought over a year and a half ago. But I still happened to have the receipt since we'd had warranty issues with the door when we first got it. (Keep all your receipts for warranty service on Jeld-wen doors. Makes it super easy.) Sure enough, we were able to return the old screen at Lowes and pick up the correct one lickedy split. (Although we didn't have time to install it.)

Then we measured our front door and looked through the Jeld-wen door catalog. Yes, they're steel doors. No, I'm not ashamed to admit that. Fiberglass is just way too expensive, and I'm totally happy with my Jeld-wen french doors. Plus, when my french doors were leaking and I invoked the 25 year warranty, Jeld-wen came and fixed them no questions asked and I've since had no problems whatsoever. And their designs are pretty cool - so who cares if they're steel or not.

I showed Mike the design I liked and he measured the rough opening for me and wrote it down in the catalog so I can take it to the deepHo and get a price. (They're all special order, of course.) But since I have absolutely no balance on my HD card (woo-hoo), I don't feel so bad about making one big purchase at no payments no interest for 6 mo's. I estimate it will probably be around $1,000 including all the hardware and such.

With the doors taken care of, the next order of business - the siding itself. Mike visted our neighbor Matt at Morse Lumber Monday morning to get a true price on the pre-primed cedar clapboards we had planned to use. But Matt said, "Why do you want to use cedar? We have a product called HardiePlank - it's pre-painted, less expensive, easy to install, has a wood grain finish, you never need to paint it, and it lasts forever."

Well, that's a no brainer. Mike came home and told me about it, and I got so excited that we both went back to Morse that afternoon and ordered enough for the entire house front. Total price - $1500. That worked out to $9 per 12' section of HardiePlank, or 75 cents per square foot. The product comes in a variety of colors, but Mike and I picked out a light grey.

Of course I think the grey is too grey, but I thought the white was too white and the off white was too yellow. And I didn't want to skew towards green or blue either. This means I'm going to have to repaint the garage, which is such a light grey, it's practically white. Oh well. I'm not too concerned about it, since the HardiePlank seems like such a great product. And I'm eager to get this siding show on the road too.

Our order will be in this week. (Eeeeeeee!) Although we won't be able to start work this weekend. (Father's Day and all.) Our friend Paul is going to help install the stuff starting the weekend after this. In trade, we're giving him a 4-wheeler. (Gotta love trade-offs) This is so exciting. Matt, who installed the product on his own house, said we'd probably be able to get the entire front done in a day - it's so easy to install. That's what I like to hear.

Now there's only one more thing to do to prepare - we need to stain the deck. Mike procured a power painter thing that we can use. I may even be able to do it myself! We just have to test it out and purchase some stain.

I'm so excited - we're moving forward at long last!

Stumped

Time keeps passing. All at once I have all the time in the world and yet none. I think I just need to abandon all hope of being productive and concentrate on that much anticipated end of the day shower. (Oh the things I look forward to now adays!)

Mike has been trying trying to get things done in between working, working for friends, and taking over for me at 6:30 every night. Yesterday he brought home a stump grinder from work and took care of the two stumps we had in the front yard. (One from the tree we took down a few weeks ago, and one from the tree we took down last year when we put up the porch.)


Now we just lay down some more grass seed and we should be all set, especially with all the rain we're due to have this week. Meanwhile, the rest of our grass seems to be coming up - I swear it's because I've been keeping Mike from driving on it.

Also this past weekend we used one of those deepHo coupons to purchase the ceiling fan for the upstairs office. (It's only been a couple years, after all.) And we purchased an electrical box to be installed at the bottom of our stairs. (We have need of a night light on the stairs and have no outlet!) Maybe this weekend Mike will be able to install both of those.

And the siding? Soon. Very soon, I hope.

On Your Siding

Home Depot wasn't as far off the mark as Mike thought. Which is what I thought. I'm not sure why he had this delusion that the siding would be cheap. Morse Lumber estimated the cost around $2000 - certainly comparable to what we saw at the deepHo. Plus we may be able to get a better price from our neighbor Matt, whose family owns Morse. He helped us out big time on the roofing last year, which was awesome and allowed us to finish by summer's end.

So $2000. I'm ok with that. When do we purchase? That I don't know. Once the siding is here, it has to go up. And that will depend on Mike and TJ's schedules. (TJ our carpenter will be over to get us started, then leave Mike to finish the job. Should be fairly simple.)

One thing's for sure, it's the 21st of May. The month is over as far as I'm concerned. Spring is over pretty much when June hits. To think we were celebrating Mike's 6/1 bday on the porch last year, after starting construction in April. Now that Mike Jr is here, we really have to get cooking.

Announcing Our Newest (And Best) Home Improvement

We finally have our new addition! That's right - baby Mike Jr is finally here! I was a total of 10 days late, giving birth on Saturday May 9th at 1:38am - just a couple days before I was scheduled to be induced. He was 7lbs 2oz and 20inches long - very healthy and beautiful. We got home this past Monday and have been adjusting ever since.

Mike Sr had the week off from work (thank god) to help me out, so we decided to commemorate the occasion by planting two new trees in the front yard. (As I've said before, have a baby, plant a tree - it just makes sense.) The trees I picked are both Kwanzan flowering cherry trees, which I've always loved and wanted for years.


We just barely made the flowering cherry selling season - the garden center only had two left and wouldn't be ordering any more, since they would soon be out of bloom. Lucky for us, that's all we needed.

The next order of business - taking down that disgusting old pine. Which proved to be no big business at all. Mike had the whole thing down and chopped in what seemed like just a few minutes, although I'm sure it had to have been at least an hour or two. And the next day he took the whole thing to the dump. Simple.

The trees didn't prove to be much trouble either. We picked out the locations and Mike dug the holes, digging in a cone shape, with the bottom of the hole about three times larger than the tree's planting container and the top only about the same size. This was advised by the garden center guy, so we could grow grass right up to the base of the tree.

The front yard and the driveway look so much bigger with the pine gone! And we placed the new trees equidistant from the road, house, and driveway, one across from the french doors and one across from the front door. So no more threat of trees getting in the way as they grow.

Two new trees, one old stump

Tree #1

Tree #2

Next order of business - get some siding on the front of the house. While Mike was home, he also took some measurements. Our carpenter TJ did the calculations for us - so now we know how much... but we don't know how much - money that is.

Mike stopped by the Home Depot yesterday on his way home from some errands and discovered the pre-primed cedar clap boards to be very expensive. Around $120 for a bundle of 10, if I remember right. We need over 100 16 footers just for the front of the house. So what does that come out to be.... (getting calculator widget)... $1200? I may have my numbers wrong. For some reason I thought it was more expensive. Ok - I'll check on that.

Not that we'll purchase from the stupid deepHo anyway. A big purchase like this definitely deserves a trip to Morse Lumber. They'll treat us right. Mike will probably go there on Monday to check out pricing. I doubt we'll be puchasing at the moment, but you never know. We've been selling off some of our extra junk to pay for these repairs - a chainsaw paid for the trees, for example. A welder may just pay for the siding.

Negative 8 Days of Baby

Yes - we're still waiting. And the rain keeps falling. The prediction of scattered showers all week long has long since turned into torrential rains all week long and I worry that our grass seed has been washed to oblivion.

At this point we'll just have to see what comes up. Tuesday we really got a soak. Wednesday, showers and clearing in the afternoon. Today showers in the early early morning. More tomorrow. Joy.

It's been 10 straight days of rain in one form or another here.

Negative 4 Days of Baby

I hate to report - there's nothing new to report. No baby. It's been 4 days since my due date and we're still waiting.

My last day of work was the 30th, and after just a few stuck-on-the-couch rainy days, I'm fed up and uncomfortable.

Mike brought home a stump grinder on Saturday and finally took care of a few of our biggest tree stumps. (Never let Nstar touch your trees. They promised us that all stumps would be ground 2" below soil level... and they weren't ground at all. That was about two years ago.)

Sunday we returned the stump grinder and picked up the overseeder and some cape cod grass seed. (For sandy soil.) Mike overseeded the lawn on Sunday afternoon, just in time for the evening's showers. And with showers all week, it should come in nicely. Plus, today we picked up some loam and Mike spread it on our major trouble spots, where grass has never grown. Hopefully this will guarantee an awesome lawn.

And me? I'm just watching him work from out the windows. Ho-hum.

Later this afternoon, we'll probably put up the closet shelves in the baby's room and the upstairs office closet - which has been awaiting a shelf for years. (I really need the storage space now!) If there's time, I'd love to have Mike throw a coat of stain on the baby's room window bottoms and another coat of paint on a toy box we're refurbishing. No big hurry though. The yard work has just been kicking his butt. And it doesn't help that I'm out of commission.