Prior to settling on the idea of buying a house, I looked at building a house. The problem was that I didn’t have the necessary amount of money needed as a down payment (40% of the cost) to obtain a building loan. At that time though, whatever the house ended up being, I had the idea of wanting the house to be green with white trim. When I finally settled on the idea of buying a house, especially one with painted siding, I knew at some point I was going to be replacing it…and I still wanted to go with the original idea I had for colors.
This past weekend, my dad came up once again to help out, staying in his 5th-wheel on the west side of the house (you can see he’s hooked in and running off the power of the house there). 
While I was at work (for only half a day) on Friday, he worked to get the F-Track and J-Channel up the west side of the house. When I got home around 12:30, I went to work on finishing the siding there. The siding to the left of the the gas meter, which had been put up a few weeks ago, needed to be removed due to an issue with how the meter was attached to the house (it prevented the siding from expanding in the heat and caused it to bubble and ripple). Thankfully you don’t have to remove all of the siding to take the bottom pieces off.
Here is a look at the front of the house, now with the siding completely done. All that is left out there is to finish the soffit on the underside of the porch roof.
Here is a look at the underside of the porch at the wall that used to contain a door into the garage. Last year we removed the door and studded it up, now you can barely notice there was anything there before…well except for the cement board. Why is that there you ask? Meghan happened to find some faux brick tiles that match pretty closely to the color of the brick currently on the house. The plan is to use those tiles to match the brick as closely as possible. We are still contemplating the idea of painting the brick so that it matches a bit more closely to the overall colors we have on the outside (shingles, siding, etc.).
Here’s a look at the new exterior light. We had this exact same one on the house before, except in black. With the white accents on the house now, I wanted to update these to white as well.
And here is a look at the side of the garage. There are a couple of new things here. In addition to the siding (obviously), the garage now has two new windows as well. Every window in the house has now either been replaced (by me) or was updated to replacement vinyl windows by the previous owner. In hindsight I wish I would have replaced all of them with new windows (the vinyl replacement windows in the old window frames can be a pain), but they will do.
So what’s left?
- Need to finish the soffit and add the aluminum fascia
- Need to wrap the old window frames in aluminum
- Need to finish the siding on the East end of the house that goes up onto the top of the garage roof (the roof was way too hot this weekend to get on it without damaging the shingles)
- Need to get new gutter
Got a lot done, still more to do, but it’s getting there!