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A little update as things have slowed down significantly...
I finished up my sons room and I think it turned out great! I had most of it done before he made it early arrival. He was 24 days early and entered this world on Sept. 17th. The only thing I had to finish was the closet.
Here are a couple pictures of him. First is 5 days old and the second is almost 2 months. He is growing like a weed and wouldn't ever think he was a premie.
One week before Kolten was born our frig took a shit on us so we were scrambling to find a new one. Well with our luck our opening is 36" wide by 68" tall and every French Door Frig we liked was too large for our opening. So we did the next best thing, without remodeling the kitchen, and got a smaller frig that will eventually be turned into our spare in the basement at some point. On the list of things to remodel, I want to rip out our pantry and replace it with a countertop that provides enough space for a larger frig. With that pantry gone, I would rip out our "computer" station in the kitchen and put in a larger, more efficient pantry, in that area.
When it rains it pours they say... 10 days after he was born, our water heater decided to crap out on us as well! Bought a new one and had it installed. While the water was off, I replaced the cheap water line valve, to the old frig, with an actually ball valve. The previous one was the pierce/puncture valve to the water supply line. When I went to close it, it started leaking. This one is much more gooder and ready for the next water line whenever we can get a larger frig.
After working on all the home projects and fetching tools from multiple places in the house, I said enough was enough and wanted to keep everything in one spot. Saved up a few gift cards over the years and picked this up. Great box for the money!
Started re-organizing the garage so the wife can park in there for the winter. I need to pick up a 60" work bench and hang the Timken cabinets on the wall. Don't mind the mustang pictures, found them in the basement and decided the bare walls in the garage needed them for the time being.
I have all the materials to do a quick reno on my fireplace, so I think that will be done in the near future on my next time off from work later this month.
Welcome to parenthood! The nursery looks fantastic. Once he's able to start moving a bunch and grabbing things, you might want to pull the crib away from the window a bit - he could get the curtain or the blind adjuster.
Welcome to parenthood! The nursery looks fantastic. Once he's able to start moving a bunch and grabbing things, you might want to pull the crib away from the window a bit - he could get the curtain or the blind adjuster.
Thanks and thanks for the suggestion. We did talk about that and will address that when the time comes. He is growing too fast. Will be 3 months this Friday!
A quick bump for some MAJOR changes coming. Last year the wife and I were discussing what we wanted to renovate next. I wanted siding, soffits, fascia, gutters, roof. She wanted a new master bath and laminate floors on the main level. We decided to go for the laminate floors and changed our minds from master bath to a new patio out back. We entertain quite a bit and would like that sooner than a bath remodel. Well Friday, June 10th, a severe storm decided to pop up and cause havoc to the house and my truck. We were pounded with 1.25" hail, 3.5" of rain for 45 minutes straight. Was pretty cool to see but now the headache starts dealing with insurance to get it all replaced/fixed.
Here is some of the damage.
I needed to thin this tree out to get more sun to the ground below to help with grass growth. This storm helped me out!
One of the bigger pieces that I could find.
This was from a neighbor down the street. All the hail washed to the street and collected at sewer drains.
My summer hobby of planting and keeping the beds clean and waiting for the plants to bloom were starting to take shape with warmer weather finally here. They filled in nicely and was very happy how they were growing. I had just split a bunch of the hostas and moved some plants around to give them a little more room to spread out. Mulch went in the week before.
30-40 minutes of destruction and I have nothing left. Looks like I will need a new hobby for this summer until next year. I highly doubt any of this will bounce back this year. Front of the house looks like crap now.
Bright side of this whole storm is I should be getting new siding/roof/gutters/soffits/fascia at a significantly cheaper price than before. I will still need to pay out of pocket for the upgraded materials but I should have majority of it covered. Just waiting on the adjuster to show up sometime this week. I'm hoping to get a new shed out of this as well. That took a beating even under the tree.
Plan is to go LP Smart Side. Not sure on color yet. I want to talk to all my neighbors and see what color they are going with so we don't all have the same color. Everyone has damage and will be getting new siding. A few houses down the street all went dark blue. Looks silly if you ask me.
Last edited by BreezyTL; Jun 13, 2022 at 12:02 PM.
Good lord that's a lot of damage and some serious hail. Looks like the local PDR places will be getting a ton of business soon.
I'm guessing your roof is toast too?
We had "storm chaser" contractors crawling thru my neighborhood all weekend. One stopped and talked to me trying to get my business. I entertained his knowledge and walked around the house to see what he had to say. Said the roof was toast, from the ground you can see all the impact spots. Siding on 3 sides of the house is pretty beat, gutters/downspouts took a good hit, window sills are all dented up, shed is beat up, all the trim has paint chipped off. I'd say the only thing that wasn't touched was the soffits and window glass.
Playing around with a 3D program provided by a contractor a couple years ago and came up with something like this. Got some time to think about it still, just so many options to choose from. The overhang off the back of the house will be gone. The deck is getting ripped out and a slab poured for the paito. Easier/less maintenance is what we want for that area. Will open up the yard a lot as well.
Last edited by BreezyTL; Jun 14, 2022 at 11:52 AM.
I'm assuming that by replacing siding and fascia, it's more work to carefully remove the existing soffits to reuse them. Easier to just replace.
Honestly I thought it would be more than $55k. Fingers crossed your insurance company doesn't drop you after this like they did my neighbor when a tree (not on their property) fell and damaged their roof.
I wasn't sure how the soffits were included but they would be upgraded anyway. I currently have wood soffits and fascia. Maybe the adjuster was generous but I won't complain. We are happy with the quote as of now. Still waiting on the quote from the contractor and we can negotiate the prices of the insurance estimate based on the contractors prices so we will see if it goes higher.
LP SmartSide Siding
Soffits
Fascia
Gutters
Down Spouts
Roof
Patio Door
3 Exterior Doors
1 Interior Door from Garage
Adding a window to the rear side of the house to view the side yard.
Last edited by BreezyTL; Jun 23, 2022 at 08:52 AM.
Finally getting things taken care of. Roof should be done, if the schedule stays the same, in a few weeks. Siding shortly after. This isn't a forever home, so we scaled back on the level of detail to save the additional cost for the extra wants we both had.
Here is an image of what we decided on. Eventually we will have a new garage/front door installed. The shutters will also be removed. I couldn't do that in the Hover program.
The guys are here today ripping the roof off and starting fascia/soffits. Hoping to have the roof done by tomorrow and they will start removing the rest of the siding on Monday.
Here is a couple before photos of the house. My focus for next year is to get the lawn looking right. It isn't bad but it could be so much better.
The deck is staying for a short while longer. I am having a concrete patio poured within the next couple months but the contractor for the siding said he would come back and finish the rear of the house where he can't get to with it still attached to the house (his recommendation). Only thing I have to do is detach the overhang. My wife and I are extremely happy to see this thing go bye bye. We won't have to deal with opposums/rabits/cats all living underneath it. The only person that will miss them is my damn dog that likes to chase them.
With the poured patio, we will need a couple steps down from the door. We are thinking of having concrete steps poured for the mean time and then have a walk out landing built with steps down. The design of that is still undecided.
The guys are moving a snail pace but it is turning out great. They probably hate me by now with how OCD I am and needing things done correctly. I have a hard time not inspecting everything they've done but there is a few things I had to point out and have redone.
Roof was done in a day, those guys didn't mess around. The siding seems to be taking for ever... On to the good stuff
I then had a buddy come over and help me start disassembling the deck overhang that was attached to the house. It was a nice feature but now the natural light that comes in the patio door is fantastic and makes us wish we did it sooner. We will definitely need an umbrella for our table since there is no shade until the sun is off to the west. It came apart a lot easier than I had expected. Who ever built it definitely cut corners and did a shit job. Glad it is getting removed.
I will be sanding the faces of the wood and painting them since we will have this for a couple more months until the concrete can be done. The 4x4's will be cut down to make a shorter railing and will be reusing some of the side pieces that are still good. Make due with that I have since I don't wanna put much into it just to rip it out come fall.
All the aluminum siding is off at this point and the house was wrapped. The house was never wrapped before this so I am pretty happy this should help with drafts and hopefully see some savings on AC/Heat.
The siding started to go up 2 days ago. Looks a lot better than before.
Hopefully they can get the whole back of the house completed today before the 3 day weekend.
Well when I said siding was taking forever... I wasn't kidding. You would think with how slow it is going up, it would be perfect. I wouldn't say these dudes are hacks but I don't know if they can read a tape measure. The simple stuff just looks rough and that coming from me, who has no experience in hanging siding but I feel I could do a better job. Good thing there is caulk to fill in the 3/16-3/4 gaps... I have made them rip off and re-do a few things already without being to picky on what needs to be replaced.
As more and more of the back gets put up, it makes the deck look worse and worse. I can't wait to remove it!
Looking good. The larger siding boards really update the look of the house for sure. You are better than I am. 3/16 gap to be filled is one thing. 3/4in I would make them redo.
What an eventful few weeks that was. It took me calling these guys hacks to finally get shit right and fixed. Still not 100% to my liking but its going to have to do without them damaging other stuff to replace/repair spots. I will just do it myself at a later date or just leave it and try not to think about it.
One spot I wasn't going to accept was the aluminum wrap around the windows. Obviously there are rough cuts and caulk the seams. This was unacceptable. The owner and I got into it a little bit, but in the end they fixed it and we talked it over when we cooled down a bit later that evening.
Here was one side of the window, which was acceptable to me (before caulk). Don't mind the dirty sills. North side of the house likes to grow some funky stuff!
Here is the other side that they had an issue with me no accepting it and calling them hacks. Told them I felt that thought it was good enough and just fill it in with caulk... They didn't like that!
Then the other 2 windows top right of the front, those sill plate wraps didn't even match the rest of the house. I made them build new ones to match the rest of the windows. The guy that did majority of the bending made a comment that my trees overhang the windows so you wouldn't notice it much! I told the guy that I was going to be cutting them back to show off the front of the house and the shingled peak now that it looks nice.
The project continued as planned, but to their plans. They just put up what ever materials they had there at the time. For instance the white flashing at the cement slab by the door. The front of the house has gray that blends in with the siding. They only had white at the time so they did white in the back. There was very little consistency from the front to the back with a few things that should have been the same.
The patio door opening was left unfinished because I have a new door on order that has yet to show up. Once it gets installed they will be back to trim that opening.
With the new siding the deck looks like shit even more than it did before. Thankfully in 2 weeks I will be removing it and 2 weeks after than concrete poured. Going the less maintenance route, can't wait! Believe it or not I took a picture of the deck and listed it on my local FB marketplace and sold the 16' boards that made up the overhang and have another guy coming with his son and grandson to help disassemble and buy the rest of the deck! Saved me $450 for a dumpster just to throw it all away.
Notice the chimney, they decided to put galvanized flashing up top but black down low. Again, something that stuck out like a sore thumb. On top of that, they added the 6" white trim boards because that is how they do that. Never ran it past me and I personally think it looked like shit. Another thing they were annoyed that they had to pull down and redo.
Red X's were to removed and replace with color matched 4" trim. Blue circles they were going to add 6" white as well. Stopped that before they got there.
This was for reference of what I wanted. I even printed out the render that I made to give to them and they completely ignored that..
At the end of the day, the house looks good. Some things I would still change but it would possibly damage the siding having to rip it off and redo. I will live with it or do it myself later. My biggest complaint is the amount of caulk they used in some spots... What can you do, looks good from the street. I can't wait to build a new house!
We just had our sons 1st Birthday this weekend and had a ton of kids over. Didn't want any kids getting a nail/screw in their foot so I asked to have them leave their magnetic broom so I could cut the grass low and do a sweep of the yard. They said they would make sure they didn't miss any... LOL!!! The left pile was from the front and the right was from the back.
Went with 60W soft white for exterior lights. We originally had the 5k cool white spiral bulbs, but I felt the new LED 60W were asshole neighbor brite and didn't want to be that guy!
The only things left to do before the exterior is done is:
-Remove deck
-Have concrete poured
-Have new patio door installed
-Trim out patio door
-Finish siding on the rear where the deck was
-Hang rear lights
-Replace outside outlets
-Paint side entry door trim (New door)
-Order/Install rear mudroom door/storm door
-Order/Install front door/storm door
-Box front porch beams and finish soffit
-New garage door and moulding
-Figure out how we want to display house number
Last edited by BreezyTL; Sep 19, 2022 at 02:14 PM.
A couple updates that I worked on over the past couple months.
Both the wife and I hated how our fireplace looked with the tile that matched our front entrance floor. I went the cheap route and picked up some peel and stick tiles from Menards. This was a lot easier than having to do drywall work and rebuilding the mantle. Thought the end result turned out well for doing this on a budget.
After putting the new stone up, the gold trim and glass needed to come out and be cleaned and freshened up.
Unsure about the white handles but that would be an easy fix if we wanted something different. The hearth will have a 3/4 box, padded for baby safety. Just waiting on the truck to go pick up the plywood for that.
Our light over the dining room table was just mounted and had a chord hung to the corner of the room and plugged in every time we wanted it on. That was very annoying and looked like shit so I cut the ceiling open in 2 spots and put the new light on a switch with the help of a buddy. My patch job didn't turn out too bad but I may have used a little too much sand texture to repaint. Might hit it with some sand paper to knock it down and repaint with just white this time, no sand added.
After trying 2 different style lights for the rear, we just matched the front of the house. Who knew selecting lights would be so tough...
A couple months earlier than expected we had our patio door installed. During the order process it was never relayed to me that the door was going to have a lip at the base about 2.5-3" tall that you had to step over to get out. I didn't like that and had the installer drop the door on the subfloor to lower it as much as possible resulting in the gap at the top. Not thrilled about it but the door is nicer than what was there. I do have a new door panel (sliding door) being made because this one is bent/warped and hits the jam when shutting and I am not happy about that. If the new door doesn't pan out to work and need a new frame I will have the new door made to fit the opening as installed, so about 1-1.5" taller.
Time to completely remove the deck! We made it just the lower half before we disturbed a bee hive. Sprayed that at night and back at it the next day.
I had a guy lined up to buy most of the wood and he bailed the week before I wanted to rip this apart. So I started calling for dumpster prices and the cheapest I found was about $550 for what I needed. Not thrilled about that I called a buddy I hunt with and thought we could repurpose and rebuild some hunting stands with the left over good pieces. He came with a car trailer and took almost all of it. Saved me $550 and we can make some better/safer stands to hunt out off. Win/Win!
I received the call my patio won't be poured this year any more. So this past weekend, I used my floor jack to loosen the footings and was able to lift them straight up and out. They were about 2-3 ft in the ground. Never want to do that again... I could have left them and had the concrete guys lift them with the bobcat but I wanted the room for the dog to run around this winter and not having to worry he will jump over something and snag a nail/bracket and cost us an ER visit. Used the magnet broom and pulled about 60 nails/screws out of the rocks after final cleanup.
This past week, Wisconsin had their 9 day gun/deer season and I was fortunate to fill the freezer with some fresh venison. I will be back out this coming weekend for muzzleloader season to hopefully get a doe.
From the hail storm my neighbor some how got new garage doors out of it and offered me is old door. I jumped on the offer to replace my non insulated door for his 2" insulated door with tinted windows and having that installed on 12/16. I got the tracks, springs, cables and door. The color of it is not what we want so I will have to either paint it white (easy option) or paint it a woodgrain charcoal tone (might source that out to someone who has some painting skills). I will try to stop one day to get a picture of what I am talking about for the charcoal woodgrain. A house close to me has the same color siding, white windows and the charcoal garage door. Looks nice to me and wouldn't mind it on my house.
Can almost start some more interior projects now that winter is upon us. Not much more to do outside til next year.
But you'll love it. 
