A milestone

It's nice to check off a big accomplishment.  I need to congratulate myself from time to time. It helps keep me motivated.

And there is so much left to do that motivation is important. 

The last blog post left with me fixing a previous mistake.  I had put the siding on wrong on the back side of the house so I pulled it off and re-hung it.

Well, I had to go back to the regular job and didn't have much time to finish.

The first thing that had to happen was furring strips.

 There wasn't enough time for pictures. Before my regular shift, I only have two or three hours to get stuff done.  So, instead of taking pictures, I got stuff done.

At the end of the day, I nearly finished.

There were just these little corners left.

Soooooo close.

And yeah, the lines don't match up. 

I didn't care.  It was raining on me most of the day so I had to take the siding panels inside to measure and cut. My time was very limited. Sacrifices were made.

But the next day....

All the siding on! 

We ripped off all the old siding, tore out wall studs, windows, floor joists and everything. Having sheathing, house wrap and siding on before the rain starts in earnest is huge.

Now we just have to paint it.  Oh yeah, and trim. Don't forget skirting of some sort before it really gets cold.

Yeah, there's plenty to do, but I am going to let this one feel good for a minute. Heck, we even took most of one day off.

Then, it was back to work.

With so much done, we are changing the name of the house

From Big Stinky, to Daisy.

Famous from the election ad of the same name.

So, we passed a milestone. It's awesome.

There is still a ton of work to do, but I think this is proof that we are at least mostly up to the challenge.

Checking off a few things

It's been a big few days.  Some of this will reflect in pictures, some won't.

The house is improving.  I do believe that if someone saw this house now, as opposed to when we bought it, they wouldn't have trouble seeing the value.  When we got here, seeing value required imagination.

Until we let them inside, that still requires some imagination.

I know that it seems like I know what I'm doing.  I don't really, but I am pretty good at making things up.  Sometimes that backfires on me. 

Take the back of the house. 

I started putting up siding and furring strips there first so no one would see the inevitable mistakes. 

Can you see the mistake(s)?

Here, let me help you.

Yeah, those look a little off.

That's going to require a large trim piece to hide.

Yeah. 

By the time I got around two other sides, I was feeling pretty good about my siding skills. I could probably be the junior guy on a real crew!  So, I decided to fix the mistake. 

Of course that meant taking all the siding down without ruining it. 

So, I did.  Mostly.  The two pieces that framed the window weren't salvageable.

It went back up better.

We were still waiting on two windows to come into our supplier before we finished the front of the house. 

Still a ninja house.

Something not right with those windows

That's better.  I'll save the window tutorial until someone asks for it.

That cleared the way to finish the band of siding all the way around the house.

Which we did... today. 

But, it was too dark to take pictures when we finished.  Have to wait, sorry.

And, the burn ban was lifted yesterday, so we burned two of our debris piles.  Gone.

Again, no pictures. We worked until just after the sun went down.

Oh yeah, and I finished the latest rewrite of The Adventure Nickel book.  I sent it off to an editor.

Yeah, how about that! 

All these things finishing up, what will I do with all my time?

Oh yeah.