Scaffolding

Give Trevor a hammer, nails, and a ladder and he can be quite industrious.  All of this scaffolding is for new siding -- safety first!

Exterior planning

So far we've had the fascia boards replaced, new roof put on and gutters installed (hurrah!). Windows have arrived and are waiting to be installed. Here's the grand plan for each side of the house.

The south side of the house, also home to the kitchen and two bedrooms upstairs:

The north side of the house, with the family room below (the window seat will be under the large window at the bottom). The green door (of course) is where the mud room will be. We're adding a window upstairs in the master bedroom, which will have a nice view looking out to the pond (ps - check out our awesome appliance storage!):

I'm not a huge fan of the back of the house, it reminds me of a tall, stacked building -- really boxy and boring (and so different from the cottage look of the front). I want to do something different with the deck on the back (eventually), it's fairly shallow and I'd like to see it made a little more interesting (which always means more money). The bottom level on the left hand side with the double doors will be my studio, on the main level is the kitchen and mud room window, and on the top floor (left to right) a bedroom, the main bathroom and we're removing the window from the master bedroom to make way for the walk-in closet that will be there:

Making window decisions

I originally wanted black windows (and still do) but the reality of black windows means taking a $3000 hit to our budget, and you can do a lot elsewhere in the house with that chunk of money.

We went with Jeld-wen Premium Vinyl single-hung windows, as they provide an even sight line (Trevor was highly particular about that). An even sight line means that the windows are symmetrical -- one side doesn't have a thicker frame than the other.

I've also adjusted the door style in the little mock-up above (still green, of course!). I like the idea of the vee-groove style on the front as we're considering interior doors that use the same vee-groove detail. Not trying to be matchy-matchy, but I don't want to do the typical craftsman door that you see used in new builds all over the place lately.

Underground electrical

Another surprise was finding out that the pole the power line runs on to the house is illegal -- it's not the proper treated wood, and even has fake marks on it to mimic a proper pole. We wanted to run the power underground anyways as the way the line was running into the house was pulling off the fascia boards. We've also upped the power to the house to a 200 amp service (originally we had toyed with an electric on-demand water heater, which is a power hog, but we've scrapped that idea). This extra cost early on will hopefully pay off when we get around to adding on a garage and large master suite -- all ideas for the future.

But, getting back to the nitty gritty:

There was a lot of digging to be done (not by hand, thankfully!). Check out the horrible wiener dog sign on the pole, it still needs to come down.

Dig, dig, dig! (And you can see the bad pole to the left of the trench.)

The mega spool of wire.

We also ran wire and cables to the end of the driveway in preparation for a gate to be built one day. You have no idea how glad I'll be when we have one -- just this week someone curious showed up unannounced and opened the door to the trailer (no knocking or anything!) when I was here. I think I'll go invest in a big stick in the meantime.

Putting a roof on it

What a difference a month can make. This week the new fascia boards and roof were completed. Just in case anyone out there needs the specifics, we went with a combed finish on the fascias (supposed to resist the paint from peeling off in the future), and a 30-year architectural finish asphalt roof with high-profile ridge caps, a ridge vent in the top of the roof (instead of those ugly black box vents) and zinc strips up the ying-yang to stop the mold from clinging on.

Whew.

Next up, we're painting the siding, trim and soffits, and trying to take advantage of the sunny early fall days. (That's a nice way of saying we're neglecting work on the inside of the house right now.)

The goal for the exterior

It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?

We've had to re-evaluate the cost for fixing up the house exterior, so instead of adding stone and building up the columns right away, we're going to focus on painting the wood siding, trim work, windows and a new craftsman/shaker style front door*.

We're still deciding on a window style -- whether to use cottage details or not (might be too cutesy?), but I know we're going with black (not sure if they should be black on the inside as well). With the white trim I think they're going to be be-au-ti-ful.

The grey paint is going to be hard to get right. I don't want a grey that's too warm (yellow-y undertones that won't go with the door colour) or too cool (purple-y, ack!).

*AND IT'S GREEN!!!