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For the past two weeks we haven't been going out to the house much. Some contract work has been keeping us tied to the computer. So in the past two weeks pretty much the only progress at the house has been:
Outdoor outletWe got the outdoor outlet in. It was not as big of a deal or as difficult as expected. We were impressed how actually it looks professional! This must be because of the little vinyl trim piece that the outlet sits in.
Pressure Washing the HouseThe house is clad with off-white vinyl siding. Over the years it has accumulated a certain amount of reddish dust, rust, dirt, spiderwebs and the like. Washing it was pretty high on the list of "curb appeal". We rented a pressure washer for the day ($50) and scrubbed the house down with Krud Kutter and a brush and sprayed it off. I did the scrubbing and PJ did the spraying and by halfway through the day we were already exhausted. The area around the front door was particularly dirty - lots of little scratches that had been filled in with rusty dirt. The scrub brush didn't work. So I had the brilliant idea to try some steel wool and it worked like a charm to remove the stains off the vinyl. Because the rest of the house still had some rusty tinges (especially under the overhang, where the rain never landed) we went over those areas again. We got the house pretty clean. A definite improvement. PJ also pressure washed the old white paint off most of the trim!
The best thing about this day: Even though it was around 90 Fahrenheit all day, the constant spray of water helped keep us kind of cool.
The worst thing about this day: The scrubbing made my shoulder hurt for a week afterwards.
Paint for the fascia boards (trim)We got a 30% off coupon from Sherwin-Williams finally, so I played with the very cool
Sherwin-Williams paint visualizer. The color that looked nicest against the greenish roof was a medium dark grey with a greenish hue called
"attitude grey" (see middle right of swatch). We can only paint when it's below 80, otherwise the paint will dry too fast. It gets up to 80 by about 10:00 am, so we'll have to wake up at the crack of dawn to get to this. Someday this coming week!
Insulation SprayingAnd here is the best part - after much waiting, preparation, research, anticipation, phone tag and a few estimates, we finally got someone out to insulate the house with spray foam. You can see the video for that here:
http://www.vimeo.com/13816739'Nuff said.
Now we can start putting the place back together again!
:D
Thanks for reading and we'll update more soon!
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