Alive!

Here I am.

Everything involving our house is still partially done. Don't ask about the kitchen, please. You may get a sock in the jaw.

But I do have news of a (sort of) completed project. This one involving the exterior. For reals, yo.

Our bay window on the east side of the house is part of the staircase that leads to the second floor. The sociopaths who installed the aluminum siding 35+ years ago, decided that it would be a good idea to hack off the lower 2 or 3 courses of rounded cedar shingles, so their crappy siding would affix itself to the house more effectively. I fixed it over the past few days:


This is from a year ago, when we first tore off the siding. You can see the butchery of the shingles on the bay.


Just getting started on Saturday.


Progress.


End of day, Saturday.


More progress.


End of day, Sunday.


The end. Now I need to repair the rotted clapboards that butt against the bay. In due time...

Looky what I did tonight...

New staircase. In 3 hours or so.

So we have this little staircase that descends into the kitchen from the south. It's kind of weird and was originally some sort of closet, with doors on either end. We plan to make it a coat room, of sorts. A coat...case...maybe?

Now follow along with the photos.


This one.



And this one...are the way way before shots. Day after we moved in. I feel only nausea upon viewing these photos.



Now this is more like it. They look great in this before pic. This was earlier tonight. I'd scraped all of that linoleum off a year ago. More, maybe...? But the look doesn't seem to go with the new floor. Plus, that bottom step was split, and people were slipping on it.



Just after I popped the top. No C.H.U.D.s under there, much to my surprise. I more than half-expected a subhuman baby skull or something. Maybe a cat carcass. But only boring 100 year old cobwebs and a 1974 penny.



This is skipping ahead a bit. As you may be able to see, I buffeted up (and straightened out) that center stringer quite a bit. Lots of shims and screws and nails and bits of plywood and things. Glue.



An almost-after shot.



And...there it is. It took about 3 hours, I think. Maybe 4. I was having so much fun, I lost track of time.

I may have skipped over the part where I miscut the first two stair treads and had to cut little wedges to fill in the gaps on the sides. And the part where I mis-placed the second tread and had to tear it out and glue-up and nail together the part that broke off before re-placing the tread. But beyond that, it was a fairly straightforward and relatively simple job. Comparatively speaking.

Phase two of this project will involve cutting a hole in the bottom riser for the cold air return grate (yet to be purchased), caulking the gaps, priming, puttying the nail holes and painting the treads slate gray. The woodwork and risers will be white. Walls will be a TBD color.

Now it's bed time.

Begin Here.

I hate movies that spend the first 20 minutes spewing exposition. So I'm not immediately going to go into a long, detailed explanation of who we are and why we're tearing the living hell out of this house.

But I'll give you a thumbnail.

We (Patrick, Robyn, Reghan, Conlan and Rowan - who was in-utero at the time of the move) moved into 216 Cottage on January 10, 2007. Our first official act as owners of the house was to tear out every inch of cat piss-scented carpet in the place. That, of course, left a lot of old timey wood floors that are in need of some repair and refinishing. We still haven't done it and will probably leave that job for last.

We'll get into the bathroom remodel we did last winter, the half-done mudroom/laundry from last summer and the half-done kitchen we're currently struggling to finish. Oh, and I may even get into why I decided to tear off all of the aluminum siding last summer even though we didn't have the money to repair and paint it. File that under Wild Hair...

So for now, enjoy a lot of BEFORE photos. We'll get into DURING and AFTER later.



The master bedroom. Nice room, save for some rotten, moldy carpet and a lot of cracking and peeling plaster. We probably won't do much to this room except floors and plaster repairs.


The upstairs hall. You may not be able to tell from these heart-breakingly low quality photos, but that's exposed (textured and painted, though!) duct work on the wall to your right. I didn't want to buy the house because of this. But it's currently being taken care of.


Beautiful pine and oak staircase. Stanky carpet, gone.


Foyer. Now also carpet free.


The kitchen. Everything you see here is gone. Well, the windows and doors are still there. This was an exercise in wasted space.