Last I updated you all regarding the house, we were just about finished with the big siding, insulation, windows, and paint project. Since then, we haven’t gotten a whole lot new done. Last year we tore out our front porch deck and replaced it. Here’s what it used to look like:

A couple of progress shots:

And after staining (it doesn’t look quite so uneven anymore, but it could still use another coat of stain):

We still have to re-do the porch railings, but that’s quite an improvement, huh?

I’m off work for the next four days (woohoo!) and I plan to do a bunch of knitting and cuddling with kittens–and try to get at least one bike ride in (more on that later!)–plus I have the Community Sock Club lunch on Saturday. Should be both a relaxing and fun long weekend.

Tomorrow I’ll continue the house updates with photos of last winter’s project.

Now that I finally have visible progress to show again (oops, just realized I never posted pictures here of the siding without paint–they’re in my flickr!), I thought I’d share a quick picture. It’s not done yet (as you can easily tell if you look at details), but it’s looking really good!

Not sure exactly when it’ll be done, but I think I’ll be able to post some before and after shots next week.

Quick one this morning ’cause I’m running late:

Found a bit of dry rot, which you can see in this shot:

It’s unfortunate, but not unexpected. And if there was going to be dry rot anywhere, that was the most likely place. The rest of the house is clean!

Oh, and here’s the end of day shot from Tuesday (they finished after dark so we didn’t get a picture until yesterday morning):

Okay, gotta go to work.

Yesterday I actually got home at a semi-reasonable time after my every-other-week LONG work day. Only 10(ish) hours! This is what the house looked like when I got here:

It was dark by the time the crew left, so I don’t yet have a picture with all the pretty sheeting up. In fact, I haven’t even seen it yet! We’re going to grab a shot on the way to the car…when hopefully the sun will be up.

There was a bit of a problem with the electricity yesterday. Basically, they broke it. It isn’t entirely their fault because the house is very old and the wire/conduit/meter base were all old too. But it was working fine until they snagged the wire somehow and pulled it out. Oops.

So the house was without power for a large chunk of yesterday and they had to call an electrician out to fix it. It was all fixed by the time I got home, and now we have a pretty new meter base:

Today is my birthday and I’m celebrating by:

1) Having a job interview (whose bright idea was that? oh yeah; mine). It’s with a recruiter at my company so shouldn’t be too stressful. Still can’t help the nerves, though.

2) Meeting with the design guy to choose colors for the house. Didn’t realize when we made that appointment that it was on my birthday. Oh well, it’ll be fun anyway.

3) Knitting at Twisted! Due to the other two appointments I won’t be there for a terribly long time, but I’m hoping to escape from work a little early. Hopefully I’ll be there from 3 (or slightly before) until 4:30.

Yesterday, the crew arrived to begin working on our new siding and windows. This is what the side of our house looked like when I got home from work:

And by the time they left for the day:

So exciting! Not sure what we’ll find when we get home tonight.

We’re gearing up to have the windows and siding replaced on our house–all at once! There’s a contractor coming on Saturday to get an idea of what we want and start to work up a quote. In anticipation of this, we’ve been cleaning/reorganizing/just plain moving things around. Tonight we shifted a bunch of stuff in the dining room/living room area. It looks much nicer in here already, but to a certain extent it’s a losing battle. When you’re only living in half a house, it’s insanely hard to keep clutter at bay. Especially when so many of our things (notably: yarn and all the rest of my knitting/sewing/crafting supplies, plus books and other assorted items) have no home.

I should probably go around and take lots of detail shots of the house before the work gets started, but for now here’s one from last summer just after the roof was finished:

I’m excited–the house is going to look so different after this project is done!

PS I now have ten little hexagon flowers. I weighed one and it looks like there might be enough yarn for 25 of them in this one skein! I’d anticipated making maybe 15 (they’re approximately 4″ across blocked, so that’d make the scarf–without the edging–about 5′ long), but maybe I’ll make it 20 or so…we’ll see.