Ceiling Fans!

We have been so busy harvesting veggies and making sauce and freezing stuff. On Labor Day...we spent the weekend ... laboring. We bought 3 hunter ceiling fans for the bedrooms. We got matching ones for the downstairs bedrooms and a white for the upstairs. We had to reinforce the light boxes, but we were lucky we could access them. Was not a fun project, but they sure are nice.

New ceiling fan in bedroom

It works!

We moved the bedroom light to hallway--where there was a broken fixture (no glass, just a bulb)

New light in other bedroom

This was the fixture in the front hallway -- same as when we bought the house

We replaced it with the other bedroom fixture. Don't love it...but an improvement!

And the last photo wasn't being artistic... we finished this close to sunset. We got sloppy doing the third one and I didn't hook up both positive wires when we first installed it. It sparked and it tripped the switch. We didn't realized that there were too breakers for this room until we installed it 2 more times and replaced a circuit breaker. Was not a fun job...but it is done!

Second flood bedroom fan

Garden update!

The garden is growing like crazy. The tomatoes I grew by seed caught up and are exceeding the ones I bought. We have already had a dozen zucchinis... gave some to our nice neighbors. Looks like we are going to have quite a bounty!

Our squash taketh over..almost afraid to sleep at night...

Green, beets, cukes. We are doing square foot gardening...so everything is packed in!

One of many zucchinis...

The boxes are still there....

Siding!

Our contractor started putting up the siding. It is taking him time, since it is a side job, but we think he is doing a good job. He started on the side of the house that is close to the property line so it is hard to get a photo of it.

The trim is aluminum and the new shingles are...gasp....vinyl. We wanted stucco, but it was too expensive.

The windows are fiberglass on the outside.

More windows

Today Selden and Ray put in 9 windows! They have some finish work left to do, but they are 1/2 done! If money wasn't an issue, we would have rather had real wood windows with true divided light. But... we have a lot more to do. We have really almost gained glass because of the storms that blocked the view from the original windows. So nice to not have chipping, pealing paint and glazing. We use window air conditioners and are surely going to have to get bracing to install the ac units.

Living room

Dining room -- we haven't painted this yet with the interior trim color.

First new windows!

Yay! The new windows came today. We are using Marvin Integrity fiberglass replacement windows. We are really impressed that we lost hardly any glass area. They are brown fiberglass on the outside and white vinyl on the inside. We are very pleased with the grids that look more like divided light than other windows we have seen. The first windows were replaced in the bathroom/closet that is set for renovations next. All the windows should be replaced by the end of Tuesday...hopefully. After peeling off the old layers, the new ones are starting to go on. The house is now all wrapped up in tyvek!

Looks a bit strange because wall between bathroom and closet has been partially demolished.

Two new windows in upper story. 

Still debating about putting the aluminum awning back on (after painting). It looks so much better without it.

Prepping for new windows!

Somewhere along the line an upstairs bedroom was divided into a walk-in cedar closet and bathroom. They placed a dividing wall right in the middle of a double window. We intend to remove the wall and make a larger bathroom with a smaller closet. In order to put the new windows in, we had to demolish some of the wall between the closet and the bathroom. Now we really have to get the bathroom done next. What fun!

"This is the house that Marty build" -- good thing he could build, because he couldn't spell! Marty must have written this when he built the wall.

The wall with the cedar lining removed.

The whole closet was covered in cedar. We will salvage it for something.

Me with the safety goggles!! and mask. The old shower curtain is protecting clothes.  We only demolished enough to get the windows in for now. New bathroom next. 

Peeling away the layers.

Under the siding was cement board. It was never painted but enough was damaged that it couldn't be used. We got an estimate for stucco and it was way higher than we wanted to spend, $15K. So we hemmed and hawed and finally decided to just go with vinyl cedar shake. We would have gone with real cedar, but the one side of the house is hard to get at because it is very close to the lot line so it would be tough to maintain. The new windows will be bronze fiberglass on the exterior. We want brown trim to go with the cedar look, so we are wrapping the trim back up again in aluminum (it actually wasn't wrapped before -- just covered with siding).

Today our friend got all the cement board off, and the aluminum awning. We may paint the awning brown and put it back for now. Ziggy likes his covered porch. We aren't ready to build a new porch roof quite yet. Tomorrow the tyvek goes on and the windows are getting delivered.

Recycling aluminum!

The aluminum siding pile was getting pretty large so we pulled out the trailer and loaded her up. We used our dumpster bag as a liner for the trailer. It was a perfect fit...4X8. Gina was closest in guessing how much we had, but we were both way off. The price for aluminum in our area is 48 cents a pound. Our trailer load netted us a cool $145 (that would be a lot of soda cans)! I forgot about the can of siding until after I strapped down the trailer. Luckily if fit in the back of the Subaru!

The garden

Catching up on a few things we've been doing. While Selden worked on the house, we were busy putting in our raised planter beds. The very dry April kinda put the garden on hold a little. Now the rain has finally caught up a little... we got back into the dirt. We went with the cedar kits from Home Depot. We got a great deal on them due to a misprint on their website...they were 1/2 price. :)

Surprise!

Well today Selden peeled the aluminum off the front of the house and we found something different ... vertical wood siding with a little ornamentation! We like the dental work on the bay window. So we will leave the front most likely... and now we have to think about color and if we want stucco elsewhere...or shingle. Decisions, decisions....

Peeling off the layers...

The house had aluminum siding put on during the mid-1900s. We were hoping for stucco, but ended up being cement siding. We hired a guy to remove the stuff off of the house. We may do the garage. Seldon, our guy, got one side done. He needs to get a scaffolding to get the other side. After a bit of debate, we decided we would like stucco. We are getting some quotes to see if it is feasible...financially. Stucco would make our house blend into our neighborhood well. We already have ordered brown fiberglass replacement windows (Marvin).  We plan on painting the trim brown, or installing a manufactured trim that is brown.

Our guy Seldon -- starting the job

The aluminum remove...we have trim again!

While Seldon worked on the house, we went for a hike with some new friends

Lodi thought it was a bit hot for a hike. We made him some shade though!

More yardwork

The weather was amazing this weekend and so we spent most of the weekend working on the yard. After cleaning up the brush from last week's work, we turned over the main garden plot. We were both amazed at how beautiful the soil is. Not a single rock! We were thinking of raised beds, but will probably just fence off an area for the vegetable garden. We used our mighty little Mantis tiller again. We created a planting bed along the garage wall where the woodpile had been. It is a really sunny spot and will work well to create a hot house eventually. We also created a new planter along the back side of the house, hoping to grow something that will block some of the summer sun from baking our brick wall. Finally, we installed two rain barrels that will help us water all the things we are hoping to grow.

Watering the strawberry plants (Spring has come so fast, we don't have the hose out yet).

New planter bed adjacent to rear of house...and our little tiller.

We decided to just reuse some existing blocks for now. We might put a deck out here eventually.

Ziggy supervised.

Putting in the last blocks.

We capped the wall with bricks from around the yard.

Rain barrel installed. We are hooking a soaker hose to water the bed.

Our little starters -- organic seedlings in homemade planter pots made from newspaper and toilet paper rolls.