Lattice trim up and painted.

This morning Kathleen and I were able to get the trim up and prime it. I also got the stairs on. It's looking very nice, we are very happy with how much we were able to get done thismorning because it's supposed to rain again tomorrow. All that's left is lattice under the stairs and a lot of painting. The trim still needs two coats of paint and the rest needs one more coat.















Here is a picture from the front (obviously).

Walkway busted up!

I also rented a 65lb. jackhammer to bust up the old walkway. There was about 1.5 inches of blacktop on top of a very nice cement walkway... too bad we have to break it up - the stairs have moved to the right so the whole walkway has to shift over too. The jackhammer was pretty wild, I was able to rent it from Home Depot for 4 hours for about $50. I broke up the walkway and a couple areas around the old porch that had some more cement. Now we are trying to figure out what to do with this big pile of cement and tar. TBD... 

Lattice is up.

As you can see we got the lattice up. I think this migh also be the first picture of the finished moulding around all the doors. You can also see that the steps are allmost finished, but I still have to attach them to the house. 

Early October Porch Update

Well, I don't have any pictures today (and that's what's been preventing me from posting) but it's been so long I had better update this thing or else I'll never do it. So what has happened since the last post? Well, we finished painting all the doors and installed them. Then I installed trim around each door to give it a little style. I also installed the soffit and crown molding for the soffit and around the roofline. We have primed everything above floor level and given at least one coat of paint to almost everything. I was in the middle of chalking and painting when it started raining last week and it hasn't stopped yet so all that is on hold. Kathleen has been busy painting all the doors and windows and it's been my job to scrape the windows (I think next time we are going with a single pane - just kidding, the panes fit the house very well).

What's next, well I bought the lumber and lattice to build the stairs and to frame and install the lattice under the porch. We went with the vinyl lattice and we will see how it looks. We want it to look very nice when it's done so that may need to change if it looks cheap. I think the reason we went with it is because we didn't want to paint anymore.

There will be four stairs up to the porch and we are going to try to get away with no railings. We'll see what happens. I don't see a reason to get a final inspection so when it's done I'm not going to say anything. We have a lot of work to do inside anyway. The stairs are going to be about 5 ft wide and I'm not sure if they will be painted or not - we are still trying to figure out the treads. I bought pre made stringers because it's such a pain to make them and I've done it before so I don't feel the need to prove anything.

Kathleen had a great idea for a place to put all the window inserts that aren't being used (since at any time we have ten inserts that aren't being used). I am going to build a shelf under the porch to slide them onto. The only problem will be - how do we get to the shelf? I still haven't figured that part out.

I've also just ordered vinyl siding from Home depot to patch up all the little places that need some help. I hope the color matches - I'm not that great with color (in fact I am color blind) so I hope it's close enough. I ordered a box so that should be enough to do one entire side of our house! Ok, not quite but close.