Four and a half months ago I briefly alluded to a little damage that had happened to the side of our house. It has been a long and unnecessarily complicated process at times, involving insurance adjusters, seeing if there was a match to our dusty mint green 30+ year old aluminum siding (there wasn't - shocker), contractors who talk a big talk but don't always show up when they say they will, going back and forth about whether or not we needed to find an electrician to take care of our above-ground wiring (we didn't), choosing a color only to find out that it wasn't in stock but being secretly glad because we were having second thoughts about what we picked and so were able to choose the color we really like, arguing with the contractor about replacing the front door which he said was not in the contract (but neither were the windows, and he did those...), and realizing how time-consuming it is to paint all the trim around that newly-replaced door...but...after all this--
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| This shows the lovely green color that once enshrouded our house. They have begun to tear the siding down on the east side where the damage was. |
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| At this point, most of the siding is down and you can see the mess that was all over the lawn. They did do a pretty good job of cleaning up, just couple of nails left. |
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| Here you can see that the new windows are in but the new trim is not up yet. They have put the insulation up at this point as well. On the porch and the garage they put it right over the old cedar siding. |
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| Here the new windows are trimmed out. I love that new front window! |
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| The new siding is up on the front and sides of the house and half way up the front of the garage. There is that nice little trailer to the left that they parked on our lawn for a while. |
...we ended up with a home that looks completely different and brand-spankin' new!
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| The back of the house. |
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| We reused our black shutters. Since they are on the north side of the house and don't ever see the sun, they were still in nice shape. |
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| The light fixture on the garage |
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| Our new red door!! Glenn really wanted a red door, and I am so happy with the color. I found this little table and chair set at Old Time Pottery and spray painted it black. I would like to get a plant or something for it. Still debating about putting a hole in the siding there for holiday decor...we'll see how I feel around Christmas time. |
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| The finished product! |
Our house was the only two-story green house in our little stretch of road, and so we always told people to look for "the big green house across the street from the church." It was kind of nice to stand out...but I never wanted to stand out by being an outdated 70's minty green. But now, we are the only classic gray/black/white/pop of red house, so we can still say "we're the big gray house across the street from the church." That's more like it.
When the storm damage hit, and the siding was stripped off, I was pretty upset. I had big plans for getting the basement finished this summer. I thought all was lost. (Dramatic, I know.) But when we calmed down, and realized that insurance was going to cover the siding, it only made sense to replace the windows as well. Goodness knows they needed it--they probably would have been ripped out by the next huge storm anyways. Looking back, I can see how that storm turned out to be a blessing to us. I thought I'd be living in the Jolly Green Giant forever.
And as far as the basement goes, there's always next summer. Except that now our landscaping is looking pretty shoddy next to that crisp, clean house...
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