Goodbye Tree

This was taken before we started working on the house.  The pine was massive and took up too much space in our backyard and shaded my garden.

My childhood neighbor came by to help dad cut the tree down.  He took all the branches off, topped the tree and then used a really big chainsaw to take it down.  Greg has started cutting up the branches and stacking all the wood.  My parents will use the wood to heat their house and we will rent a chipper and use the wood chips in Rudy's pen.

Goodbye Garage

 

We called the guy who removed our radiators to see if he would take down and haul away the garage, but the value of scrap metal has gone down so we had to pay him to take it down. It was the best $80 we spent.

Fiber Cement Siding

We got one quote on the fiber cement siding and trim work before we decided that we would do it ourselves.  The quote was $20,000, this was way more than we could afford and from our calculations included about $10,000 in labor charges.  It would have been nice if we didn’t have to lift a finger and the whole project would have been completed in 10 days, but we just didn’t have the extra $10,000.   In terms of the actual installation, Greg and our dads are doing all the work.  My primary role along with our moms is to make lunch, do groceries, cheerlead, help carry the siding, and work on the inside of the house.  All that we have to finish now is the siding on the two peaks, painting the soffits and trim work.  The peaks are the only thing we really want to get done this year and today was the first day we had snow so our good working days are numbered.

I am very happy with the look of the fiber cement, it has fake wood grain and the color is very pretty.  You need to purchase a special blade to cut the boards, and in terms of nailing it we are using 1 ¾” roofing nails.  We’ve gone through two Bostitch nailers and returned both, one broke after a couple days of use and the other broke within a few hours of use.  Last weekend we bought a Hitachi and it seems to be working well.  I had to get a reducer for the air hose and I took the gun with me to the hardware store.  As I was waiting in line, the guy behind me said he had the gun and he loved it. 

Our new addition

Well he isn’t that new, but for awhile we weren’t sure that we were going to keep him so I didn’t want to mention him. His name is Rudy and he is a 2 year old German Shepherd. We adopted him in February. Rudy’s first “parents” were an older couple (in their 70’s) and they had him for about a year, in the woods of New Hampshire. From what we were told, and from his displays of neurotic behavior he was not socialized. The older couple decided he was too much to handle and they gave him up to a German Shepherd breeder/police K-9 officer couple. The breeder trained him and gave him back to the older couple, but they still couldn’t handle Rudy so the breeder took him in. Rudy stayed with the breeder and K-9 couple for a few months, but I have a feeling he lived most of the time in an outdoor kennel.

When we bought the house it was always understood that we would get a German Shepherd and Greg and I agreed that we would wait until February, so in January I started to look on Petfinder and I fell in love with his picture. February 4^th we got Rudy. The breeder didn’t mention that he was fear aggressive and that he is afraid of everything, but we quickly figured that out. Since then, we took him to the vet and she recommended Prozac so we’ve tried that out along with, socializing him, exercising him (lots) and just giving him time to adjust, he is slowly getting better. I don’t trust him around children, or for that matter anyone else besides our immediate family and I fear for the person who is stupid enough to try and break in to our house.

Front of the house

We finished the siding in the front of the house this past weekend. As you can see we still need to refinish the porch. The lovely brown square columns will be replaced by wide round columns the same color as the trim. Next spring the plan is to add black shutters, paint the soffit and the gutters.

more photos from this summer

Without the old siding.


















End of day one- siding.

















End of day day two.










Olive Certainteed Fiber Cement Siding.

More after photos without asbestos