House Made

All right photo bullies — here are a couple of pics for you! (You know who you are! If you are not a photo bully and want to know who they are just look at the comments in my last post where they give themselves away.)  Actually, you aren’t really bullies. You’re delightful and I love that you’re interested enough in our progress to hassle me about getting photos up. You plague me like locusts of love. And you’re right Greg – nothing is more important than the house!! I just lost focus there for a sec. Priorities have now been reset.

So here’s the front window. (Sorry the contrast is a little low. I grabbed these shots on my way to work this a.m. and the sun wasn’t really out yet.) The little daubs are the wood filler that I have yet to sand off and touch up. And the little gap you see at the bottom of the sill will be repaired to match the width of the overhang on the top piece of trim.

Here’s the front door. It looks way better in person, mostly because there’s no longer a rough edge of medieval-looking concrete surrounding my beautiful wood door. The top piece of trim is weirdly narrow because the porch roof, as you can see, comes barely above the top of the door. The gap there will be covered with trim once we’ve painted the ceiling.

And here’s a close-up of our lovely doorbell. Wow, the paint looks bright in that photo. It’s actually a dark burgundy.

More to come this weekend! Stay tuned you lovely torch-bearing, hungarian mob of old-housers!

For the first time in a few months, we’ve actually done something that makes the house look different. And not just different, better! Well, at least we think it looks better. Saturday we not only got the first complete bank of windows in on the front of the house (repaired side windows are in but you don’t really see those from the street, so they offer no big visual impact), we also got all the trim up on those windows, trim up around the front door and 2 out of 3 trim pieces up on the garage. Beth installed the doorbell we got forever ago and I mounted the house numbers we got forever and a day ago. All in all it looks fantastic! It’s actually starting to resemble our (evolving) photoshop image.

So why are there no photos accompanying this post? Well because I havent taken any. Turns out, I’m busy. But take my word for it. It’s coming right along.

We plan to do the last of the front windows this weekend but it’s HUGE and it has divided lights so it could end up taking longer than the weekend. Still though, it is the goal. Last window and trim up by Monday night. Keep your fingers crossed.

Oh and Beth got excited super-Dixie-style when the FedEx guy came and actually used the doorbell. (Just so you remember, Dixie is the dog.)

look at that!!
Originally uploaded by merideth.

Okay so after like three weekends of working on the window repair (actually, it was two weekends…I’ve just been too swamped to blog it) TAAA DAAAAAAA! Dudes of the house-reno community (and I mean “Dudes” like Dudekind, so that includes Chicks) behold my magically created corner brought forth from thin air!!

There are 9 photos on flickr that show you what I started with. So just go over there and have a look.

Click here to see why the angels sing! My comments and clarifying remarks are under the photos.

dixie with a second coat
Originally uploaded by merideth.

When you walk under the saw horses holding the freshly painted white window, you might end up with a second coat that does not match your original, furry one.

But you are not unhappy with the situation and you did retrieve the squashed cherry tomato that had fallen there.

(Dont worry — piece de resistance window to come.)

Trust me, I’m only helping you by not posting endless refrains of the following:

“Today we rot-fixed, sculpted, sanded, stripped, primed, painted, repaired, and reglazed windows.”

As truthfully that is ALL that’s going on. It’s not fun to do. It would not be fun to read about. BUT, by way of a teaser, I will say that my piece de resistance of re-construction will be unveiled this weekend.

I created a corner where there was NONE! None, people. There was air where there should have been corner. Just you wait til you see the end result. Tune in next time for…ADVENTURES IN EPOXY PUTTY!