House Repairs: Days 3-8

The reinforcements (a.k.a. Manda's family) arrived this past weekend and we got to work quickly. Between Friday and Saturday we managed to finish scraping 3 sides of the house, primed the tan siding & white trim, caulked around all the windows, doors and any seam/gap, and put the final coat of tan and white on! Let me tell ya, my family is the hardest working group of people I've ever worked with! The whip was cracked at 7am everyday and we didn't rest until almost sunset (enter: yawn).
Here's the final product:
The front:

The back & 1 side below (there are a couple areas along the bottom and one spot on top by the window that have since been reattached, patched, primed & painted) :

On Sunday, we worked on scraping this side of the house (below). It's a tight squeeze because there's only about 10 feet of space between our house and the neighbor's. So, everything has to be done with extension ladders. The top third is the part that we weren't able to reach with our extension ladders. The middle part is primed and the lower part has been primed and painted. This is still a work in progress but the rain has hampered our ability to finish this up yet. Plus, we'll need to rent an even longer extension ladder (~40') to get the top part. On Sunday night, my mom and brother went home but my dad stayed and I've managed to keep him quite busy.

It poured and poured all day on Monday. But never fear... there are indoor projects that have been patiently waiting. Enter the infamous basement. Here's a before shot:

Here's the after shot of the project we worked on all day Monday:


And the new shelf loaded with room to spare!!
This brings us to Tuesday. The rain had passed but now we had to let the siding dry out. So, we shifted gears and repaired the rotting siding on the upper level of the front of the house where the porch roof meets the siding. OMG! What a project!! We spent from 8am-7pm taking off the old siding, replacing the vapor barrier, installing new siding (all with angle cuts!) & caulking the seams. I learned a ton! My dad is seriously so amazing, patient and brilliant with this stuff! I kept him well hydrated, caffinated and organized:)
Here's the one side:


And the other side:

6 tubes of caulk should ensure a tight seal:
So, that brings us to today- Wednesday. I'm back at work and Mike and my dad are working on replacing the trim on the back porch that had also rotted. This job would have been super easy with a compound miter saw but alas, we don't have such a thing. So, once again my dad is making due with the saws that he brought up. Oye vey, that kind of cutting and 3 dimensional visualization is beyond me. My dad will be in Duluth until Saturday at a football camp so I'm hoping we can do a couple more small things before he leaves and be able to take advantage of his height for the painting on the side of the house. I truely owe him a million! We did manage to fit in a couple fun outings. We went to the Duluth Huskies minor league baseball game Monday night and out for dinner at Mike's restaurant last night.

Stay tuned... we've still got a few things to finish up but we are oh so close!