Peach Siding - Another Spotting

Yesterday evening, when we were working on taking down the other elm, I noticed some more peach paint peeking through on our siding!

The electric meter is there on the side of the house, but at some point, the meter was changed--  the meter that is there now is smaller and a different shape than what was there previously.

More peach!

Design Plans - Update

I've been meaning to post these for a week or so...  I asked K to send me the sketches she made on Google Sketch-Up of her ideas for replacing the siding.

These pictures also include her idea for dormers on the front of the house.  With a flat roof on each dormer to give them a more modern look, rather than the traditional   ^  peak.  Though traditional to a Cape Cod style house, I thought that type of peak looked older and much less modern than we'd like to go for.

If we do end up going with the cement-board that we've looked at, our siding colors will be more gray and less blue than these pictures.  But it's easier to see the variation in these sketches, since they aren't all gray.

The palette, so far...

Lots of new siding, and lots of variation in the siding.  This will allow us to use up the little bit of un-returnable scrap that K has accumulated, and also play a bit with the color and design.  We're also considering rock for the bottom section.  And there's my Neptune Green door!

Her plan includes a small new porch off the front of the house, and off to the right side.  Since we took off the awning over the front door, we don't have a roof covering the door, and we are definitely missing that when it's raining or snowing.

Keeping the privacy fence on the right side of the house is a must.  Some bedroom windows face this side, and the fence provides privacy from the street.  The yard is also out of view of the busy streets, which makes it really comfortable back there.

Doesn't the house look awake and cute with those dormers??  K also widened the triple window in the front.  We will replace these windows someday, and we could make the side windows wider when we do so, creating a larger panel of windows.  The other window in the front is also larger than we currently have-- I think she wants to center the window in that bedroom.

Annnnnnd...  K gets her white picket fence.  It sounds like she's wanted one of these for a while, or maybe just for this house.  But I think it will look great.  And, it will do much better at keeping litter out of our yard than our current fence, since the boards are much closer together.

This side roof over the mudroom is about the only thing we could do to make a "Mod 50's" roof on our house, without drastically changing our second level (not that we're totally opposed to changing that.)

Currently, the peak of this roof is right in the middle, and there is a metal awning extending out past the door.  If we remove the awning, and if K builds out the step in front of the door, we can also extend the roof out at that sort of low "modern" pitch.

It's a possibility!  Not sure how or when we'll get to the outside of the house, but it's really fun to think about.

Stairs For The Patio Door

Ever since K put the patio door in last fall, we've had only a simple wooden step outside of the door.  It was just one step, so it was kind of a big jump.  And by this summer, we'd used it enough that it was becoming a bit rickety -- it wasn't really anchored in well.

The siding around the door wasn't finished, either, which didn't bother us much.  It was kinda ugly, but we figured we'd re-do the siding some day and it would get finished then.  But... our new insurance agency didn't like the un-finished-ness of the patio door area, and said we had to fix it because it wasn't "fire safe."  Hmm.  OK...  K knows the codes and didn't see a problem with the way it was.  But since we like our new policy, she said she could just fix it.  I offered to take a bunch of pictures so that our agent wouldn't have to run out to our house.

But, wow,  I'm glad she fixed it!!  I love our new step, and the house looks neater with just that simple white trim.

               Before:

                    After:

K anchored the steps into the asphalt and to the house, so they're really sturdy.

And the treads are made of Brazilian ipe, so they're really beautiful.  

Boy kitty enjoying the view...

Was There A Chimney?

Looking at the front of our house, do you notice the stubby little chimney?

I didn't, at first.  It sort of looked like a planter.  Especially because there were overgrown weeds sprouting up out of it.

But we took a closer look, and we think the chimney used to go all the way up the front of the house.  This had to have been at least 16 years ago, since we have the MLS photo from 1997 and the chimney is short in that picture, too. 

Here are the bits of evidence that indicate the house once had a tall chimney:

#1-  Behind the wood trellis, the siding of the house is not the same.  It looks like just a piece of wood paneling, painted the same as the siding.

#2-  The eaves trough looks patched in this part.  It makes a little jump and the seams don't line up perfectly.  (Perfectly enough, though, since water doesn't leak out of the gutters here.)

#3-  The large pile of pale bricks in our backyard, at the end of the alley.  The pile is as much dirt as it is brick, but we can see them there.  And they match the bricks of the little chimney.

I would love, love, LOVE to find a picture of the house when the chimney was tall.  I think it would be really adorable.  I'd actually like to rebuild the chimney, but it doesn't fit into the designs that K has been working on.  It would probably be spendy, too.  And it's not like it would be functional.  --We figured out that the chimney now is just a plain tube sticking up from the roof in the back of the house.

So, until I find an actual picture of the house with the tall chimney, I decided to make one up so that I could see what it would look like.  I think it's cute!

Dear Scrappers....

The items in our backyard are OFF LIMITS!!  WTH?! 

Someone stole our awnings out of our back yard today, the ones we took down a couple weeks ago.
Seriously, the back yard.  Not off to the side, not anywhere obvious.  Literally, flattened and tucked in alongside other items just a foot or two from the back of our house.

Seriously?  Someone would have had to looked at the house, said, "Hey, there's only a few awnings on that house, maybe the other ones are still around somewhere."  And then gone poking through our yard to find them!

I called around to all the local scrap-yards I could find online.  I emailed pictures of the awnings to every email I could find.  We're annoyed and want them to get caught.

It's not the money that bothers us...  They probably weren't worth more than $50.  It just feels like a violation.  Someone was in our yard, close to our house, and stole something.
And what's to stop them from doing it again?

Awnings Are Coming Down!

Ever since the first time we saw our house, K has been saying, "Those awnings gotta go."

I didn't care either way, really.  The awnings were fine, doing their job keeping the rain off our heads as we go in the door.  The window awnings did block the view more than I liked, though.  And I know awnings are supposed to be helpful with shading the house, but our house faces South, so the couple side windows are really the only ones that get intense light.
I agreed with K that the house would look drastically different without them, and I told her she should take them off if that's what she wanted.

I can't believe they lasted a whole month, truthfully.

Work in progress...  My handy-lady on her ladder.

Determined...

And the result...?  Our house is awake!

Not all of the awnings are off, yet.  We took off the 3 from the front of the house, and 3 from the first-floor side windows.  We left the ones on the 2nd floor, for now, because those will take a little more effort to get down.  And we left the big awning over the side door, since that's the door we always use, and it's nice to have for the rain, and eventually for the snow.  We'll take that down when we can replace it with something else right away.

We like it!  K was right, it does look nicer.  Plain, but still nicer.  And we'll make it look better soon.