Weekend Progress

We’re in high home repair mode, but I thought I’d take a break to show you your progress.  We started yesterday morning with the goal of the getting the siding we need to replace the rotten pieces we have on the front of our house.  We headed to Builder’s Supply since we had heard from numerous sources that they are the best resource for siding in Omaha.  They had an awesome design center and if I hadn’t been so focused on the task at hand, I would have loved to wander around and see what’s new and hot.  Anyway, after looking at our siding for about 2 seconds, the helpful sales guy told us we were in trouble.  Apparently the stopped making the siding mid-1990′s.  Since our house was built in 1997, it’s safe to say that it was probably discontinued at the time of siding and the builder more than likely just had it sitting around.

We left with a few options, the least attractive of which was to reside the entire front of the house.  Not my idea of a good time.  We decided to get a second opinion and headed to Millard Lumber.  The guy there told us, “You guys aren’t going to have a good day, they haven’t made that in quite awhile…you may want to just head to the bar.”  Excellent.

So, home we headed to ponder.  I decided to launch an expedition to the attic to see if by some miracle, the first owner of our house had stashed extras in the attic.  I found a pair of kids snow boots, a beer bottle, 2 old valences (which are HILARIOUSLY awful, so I left them up there, misc. nails, and 1 piece of 6′ long siding.  I brought my prize down to Steve and then made him take my picture with it.

Alright, so we need about 26′ total, so more improvising and creative strategy will be necessary.  We worked out a plan that involved creating our own siding with various saws to match.  I’ll go into that once we get that part of the process underway…it’s TBD for now on the effictiveness of that.

First step in siding removal is to take off that end piece.  One of the ways to side a house quick is to put this type of “end cap” on the boards so you don’t have to worry about being precise with your cuts.

There, board off.  Next, we just started cutting into the siding that was rotten and prying it off with a crowbar.  Thanks to our neighbor for giving us an extra crowbar to use.  Our neighbors are seriously awesome in supporting our home remodeling efforts.  I can’t imagine trying to do this with neighbors you don’t get a long with.  Anyway, digression.

So after you have a chunk off, it’ll look something like this.  Our rotten part was in the lower right corner of the window.  We were disappointed to find that the house wrap was SOAKED.

After we peeled it back, things did not get better…lots and lots of mold.

I went in the house to search for my mask and somewhere in this process, Steve got bonked on the head with a stray board.  The gash was a little to large for my liking, so off we went to the Urgent Care.  Thankfully, he didn’t need stitches and they glued him back up and we came home.

He laid down until the headache subsided and then headed back outside (the doctor ruled out a concussion, so he was free to do what he pleased…I tried to get him to lay down for the night, but he oft ignores these types of requests).

And sadly the mold reached all the way to the sheetrock.  It’s so frustrating to think this could have all been prevented if they had just cleaned their gutters (when we moved in we discovered there was a stray shingle that was clogging the water’s path out, since the roof was shingles 6 years ago ish, we’re assuming the water had not been flowing down correctly for quite some time and instead ran down the side of the house).  We decided to let it air out for the night and came inside.  We’re headed back out to continue our tackling today, I’ll share our plan once we finalize it

Here’s where our house ended the day yesterday:

Send good thoughts our way, we need all we can get today!

About these ads