In honor of Earth Day---our "recycled" house!

 Just a few in progress photos.  Other than a bit of touch-up and cleaning, the front is DONE!

On this one, you can really see the BEFORE and AFTER

Unfortunately, the white downspout (to be painted) and the strange green rosebush hide the awning from the front.  Time to give that rose a trim!

 

Awning before.  They just don't make them this well anymore!

Time to let Husband rest for a few days. :-)   Onward to the south side!

Happy trails,

bobbi c.

Getting there! More in-progress photos of painted cottage . . .

Just wanted to post a few more "in progress" photos of the house and garden.  Husband just finished up painting the front of the house (YAY!) although I don't have all the photos  yet because the scaffolding, etc. is still up and I need to wait til it's down.

We also had another huge repair to do---crumbling City of Taylor sewer lines have to be replaced and we had to pay the city to install a tap into their main line---something they should have required homeowners to do when they completely re-did the streets back in 2006, but didn't. Now anytime these old pipes have to be re-routed (and most of them will have to be sooner or later), they'll have to dig up the street-AGAIN.  Sigh.

When I write my book on how to buy an old house (and what NOT to do), there will be extensive issues about old plumbing in it---believe me! :-)

So, here they are, working hard at it:

Bright and early, at 7 am

The very efficient City of Taylor crew--got the job done fast

Now, house pics!

Almost finished---still needs more green on the window sashes and the front screen door re-do

LOVE that little attic window!

 It never occurred to me that Victorian houses are painted the way they are to show off every little bit of architectural detail.  So when I read that, I decided to do the same thing with this 1930s jewel.  In the original photos, you barely even notice the little attic window.  Using the two colors on it, and the third (brown) color for the brackets, really shows it off.

And while Husband was hard at work finishing up the front, I was in the back working on a "little" project---scraping and sanding the old paint from the original wooden awning that will go over the left-most windows on the front.

That's a lot of scraping and sanding!

More pics, added later:

 

Here's the amazing custom light fixture my sister and brother-in-law made for us.  LOVE it there over the front porch!

And here are a few pics from the garden, taken right before the April cold front and wind storm/hail came through:

Coral honeysuckle, hummingbird magnet grows on a re-purposed clothesline pole.  Wrought iron from the old greenhouse shed decorates one side of it.

Perennial onions are blooming, and are always a delight to bees, butterflies and people!

And the back porch garden. . .

And just for grins, another look at the BEFORE:

Happy trails from Texas!  Come on, spring!

bobbi c.

Love that yellow!

Spring has sprung here at the cottage and Husband Rudy has been as busy as the Easter bunny!

I must say I'm having a very hard time concentrating on my current novel work-in-progress, the handful of short stories I'm trying to finish up for a new collection hopefully coming out in the fall, and my own garden.

I think the house is breathing a sigh of relief, too. :-)  It's been white since who-knows-when.

Here's the BEFORE photo.  1950s aluminum siding, chalky, flaking paint, two front doors, one leading into the bedroom.  UGH.

Yesterday, three years later.  Primed and ready for color!

More later!

Happy trails,

bobbi c.

Progress on the "Big House" and the "Tiny Cottage"

Both Husband and I have been busy, taking advantage of this wonderful weather we're having.  Yes, we had an early freeze last week, but today it's 70-degrees, with a light wind.  MY kind of weather!
Here's the view from my dining room window, towards the garden at the back.  There's still a LOT of green-goodness out there!

Rudy's been busy with the front door project.  If you want to see it in live action, check out the short video, showing how he tamps down the insulation inside the wall:

http://youtu.be/QWWiSdmSjfA

Here, part of the siding has been filled in, wiring for the cable TV and an electric outlet has been added, and he's adding the cellulose insulation.

This photo shows the placement of the door.  Once all the siding is replaced, it will be sanded, caulked, scraped, caulked some more, sanded some more, primed, and then (WHEW!) painted!  Like I mentioned in a previous post, we saved the siding (antique pine ship-lap in the smaller profile) from the greenhouse lean-to we tore down last year because of a rotted roof.

We still haven't decided what exactly to do with the front porch railings.  I do love the old oak leaf and acorn wrought iron, but would like something a bit more 1930s looking.

And for my building project--I got motivated to work on the backyard cottage (future garden room/studio/guest room/who-knows-what building) after my friend came over and fixed the ceiling that was falling down, patched, textured and painted.  It was a big-ol saggy cracked mess before.  She did a wonderful job, BUT we are on blackland prairie soil, and houses here have a tendency to float back and forth like a ship on the ocean, especially after a rain.  Or after a drought.  Or pretty much anytime. 

It's one of the things we put up with in order to live with this "magic dirt." Cracked ceilings, cracked floors and cracked walls.  Sigh.

So far, so good--no cracks.

 

One big job was to remove all the excess floor trim that a former carpenter had installed.  I swear he was trying to recreate the Great Pyramid of  Giza.  He had three layers of wood trim around the entire (tiny) room.  And in a room that small, every inch counts.  Not to mention all the extra dust it catches. With my trusty hammer, cat's paw and large pry bar, and a few select curse words, I was able to remove all the trim in two days, clean it up and caulk the living daylights out of it.

Can you say, overkill?  Here's before:

And After.  Yes, I know.  It's not beautiful.  Yet.  But, it is starting to look like a real little house instead of a nasty, dirty Roach Palace.  

The floors were previously covered with some horrible 1970's vinyl.  I'll probably clean, patch and paint this floor and use washable rugs.  Even though the Big House is on a pier-and-beam foundation, the garage and cottage are on a concrete slab.

Here are a few "in progress" pics of the rest of the room.  This door leads to a tiny powder room.

There is actually a nice-sized closet to the left of that blue wall.

Two north-side windows make this an excellent place for painting.

And here's another rose bouquet shot I took this morning, just because.   And no, I was NOT drinking wine for breakfast.  The bottle holds some green pepper cuttings I took before the  freeze we had last week.

Happy trails,

bobbi c.