Paint!

Finally, after weeks of prep work, The final coat of paint is on the house! I still have a lot of trim to paint and I haven't even started on the porches yet but this is a big milestone for the house. It's been a patchwork of colors, primer, and bare wood for years now.

Here are a few pictures:

(Sorry for the blurry pictures, I think something was on the lense of my camera phone)  I had to make a lot of repairs to the siding, here I replaced the bottom two boards, there was one board completely missing and the other was splintered beyond repair. I installed Hardie Board to replace them. It's really a great match, you cant even tell that it's not original.

Here is a shot of the south side of the house during the caulking phase:

Here are some pictures after painting:

There is still a lot of trim work to do on the Sunroom, once all the woodwork is done it will be painted the trim color (Valspar Homestead Resort Jefferson White)

The color is still a little brighter that I wanted and a little too orange but I can live with it and I think it will look great once the trim is cut in.

I'm hoping to have all the trim cut in by this weekend, then it's back to finishing the front porch and columns.

More house caulking and main bath sheetrock

Work has been steadily progressing on caulking the house. There are now only two walls left to do, our back bedroom wall and the front guest room wall.

Here is an in progress shot of the master bedroom and living room wall. This wall is the hardest to get to because of the power line running in front of it. The ground slopes away on this side of the house so it's also taller by about 4'.

We had to use an extension ladder on top of the scaffolding to reach the peak. We use two walk boards, one below the other to hold the ladder in place. The upper walk board is clamped into place and the ladder is wedged against it so it cant move.

This is my helper on the ladder caulking at the peak of the gable. I'm glad he's not afraid of heights because I wasn't about to get up there...

Over the weekend I also continued the sheetrocking of the main bathroom. I noticed that a lot of cold air was getting into the house through the open walls.

This door goes to the Study. I dont need a door here so it's getting covered over. I pulled the casing off and sheetrocked over it. I will frame it in from the other side once I start on the study. I had to ad a lot of 1x6's to the wall to shim it out.

This is as far as I got, I had to turn my attention back to caulking the house.

All the work I have been doing lately, laying the floor in the side hall, putting up sheetrock in the bathroom, caulking the outside, has really helped with keeping the cold out. It's been getting down to 27 each night but it's been staying relatively warm inside. The heating system doesnt have to work near as hard to keep it at 65.

As soon as the house is completely caulked we'll be spraying on another coat of primer then brushing on the final coat of paint.

Caulking the house

Yesterday we began caulking the house. We were able to get the entire side of the 2 story section done.

It may not be obvious in the picture but the caulking makes a hell of a difference in the appearance of the house.

Hopefully we can finish caulking in the next few days. Once that's done I'm going to apply another coat of primer then paint.