A response in avoidance of the Daily Post’s Writing Prompt https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/too-soon/

As we move towards the end of the exterior painting part of the retrospective, I want to show the porch before moving on to the final showing of the front of the house.

The porch of the house was, like the south side, a mess when we bought the house.  This will also be another, separate post, but suffice it to say, it took a good year for our carpenter to put it to rights so we could move on to the painting stage.

Here we are during the scrape and sand phase.

Moving on to priming.  The outside of the porch (the curved section) was already primed from when our carpenter rebuilt it, so less prep for the painters!

And now, painting commences.

We tried out a couple of column colours (namely, red, black and green) before settling on the red.

And now, the finished product.  I love it!!

A response in avoidance of the Daily Post’s Writing Prompt https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/flangiprop/

The south side of our house was a mess when we purchased the house.  But we didn’t know exactly how much of a mess until we had the siding, shakes, watertable, etc. repaired, which we had to have done before we could paint.  Lots of rot and wear, and our carpenter also discovered that the back corner of the south side of the house was no longer actually attached to the foundation.  It was just kind of floating there.

But the tales of wood repair and the mysteriously floating house shall come back in due time.  Today is about the painting.

The prep involved not only your basic scraping…

but also an elaborate scaffolding of the house.

Priming was next

And the start of painting the trim.

Then the painting slowly took shape

Here we are getting closer…

And finally…

We also got that new back bathroom window built and installed while all this final painting was going on…

A response in avoidance of the Daily Post’s Writing Prompt https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/immortalized-in-stone/

Now that we’ve lived in our house for just over 3 years, it’s time to reflect on everything that’s been done to it.  Not as much as we should have done, but a lot nonetheless.

I am going to start this October series with a look at the latest endeavor:  the painting of the outside of the House.  Now, I’m not going to show the whole thing in one post.  No.  It will take a few posts as this is a large house, and there are many sides to show (well, at least 4).  So, let’s start with the back!

Now, Part 1:  the back of the house.

Here are pictures from well before we bought the house.  It used to be a care home (from the late 50s until the early 80s I believe) and then became a B&B until 2002. During that time, the deck had a fire escape emptying onto it from the second story.

Just before the house went up for sale in 2012, the owners began to refurbish the deck, so when we bought it there was no longer a fire escape from the second floor, and the railing and staircase had been removed.  You can see the old fire escape door, now known as the door-to-nowhere, up above the deck door.  Note that we are thinking of turning that door-to-nowhere into a window – we’ll keep you apprised!

We did ultimately add a railing and stairs to the deck

And now, the painting…of the house, not the deck.  That will be next year.

During prep…

Trim, soffits, fascia and door-to-nowhere painted.

And gradually the upper half of the house takes shape.

Also, the part of the house beside the deck…

And the deck door

And finally, the back of the house in all its final glory!