What are We Doing to Our Poor House?

Well, our big summer project--SIDING--has begun, and it did not have an auspicious beginning. Oh, we made our decisions, and planned out the steps (and even wrote the steps out on paper that I hung in the garage so we wouldn't forget anything), but what happened, and what we planned to happen, are two very different things.

First, it might be prudent to mention that Mark and I took off last Friday so we could devote a day to driving around Michigan to look at siding and make our final decisions and orders for materials. (And, by the way, Friday was a hot and miserable day.) Our seventh stop of the day (but third stop relating to our siding project), we lucked out and found a great deal on stone, so we're going to fanci-fy the front of the house! (Of course, the stone we wanted was out of stock, so we would only be able to work on prepping the area over the weekend.) The stone is called Country Ledgestone Tuscany. We were originally going to go with a different brand of stone (if we felt we could afford to get stone), but this company operates locally (out of Grand Rapids), and we liked this style, so we went with it.

Unfortunately, that put us at about 3pm on Friday, Memorial Day weekend, and we hadn't even made it to the siding store yet. A short drive got us there, and Mark had the list of items to order, but this came to a crashing halt. Mark wanted to do our trim in PVC (a plastic that looks and acts like wood), as it would in general make our lives easier, and is a good product to use. However, the sales guy recommended going a different route, that is somewhat cheaper (particularly, over the total cost of the house), but exceptionally more difficult, as it requires the use of an aluminum brake to fold metal. (Of course, at the time we didn't think it would make things more difficult, which is why we followed his advice. Now we're trying to decide if all the time, effort, and headaches are worth the cost of the more expensive, and easier, solution.)

Then it came time to actually start working on the house. We removed the siding where we'll be putting the stone, and discovered that some of the wood was rotting (I guess we shouldn't be surprised, since the siding is defective, and they didn't housewrap the garage). Also troubling is the lack of drainage tiles in the ground.

 

So, that means we ended the weekend with all the demolition done for the *very small* area we were starting with (the garage) and almost no construction done. /Sigh. It's going to be a long summer.