Dec 7, 2011

Only seeing the 'potential'

Our house definitely isn't 'done' yet...but if you like doing projects and decorating and re-designing...is a house really ever done?

I've come to the point where I obviously still see the unfinished projects around the house but to me...the unfinished painting in a room, or the piles of tools or the incomplete exteriors don't bother me because I see what they WILL look like. When it comes to the exterior of our house right now...I think my neighbors would like to stop seeing the rough 'potential' and start seeing some actual put-togethered-ness.

We have been working with an amazing group of people who will make the house look fantastic. So to my dear neighbors...please stick with us...and we promise to put everything back together.

I realized I have never posted pictures of the progress on the outside of the house so...here you go.

This is how the house looked when we first moved in. It's a Cape Cod style house that charmed me from the first time I drove past it. :)
One of the big problems with it (that caused most of the water damage to our house) is what you can see in the picture below. The gutters were sitting directly on top of the exterior wall. So when they iced over a couple winters ago...the water only had one place to go...straight down and into our house.
You'll see another problem in that picture above. Can you imagine coming to our front door on a rainy day? There was nothing there to shelter anyone (or keep our mail from getting soggy for that matter). Another issue we have corrected.

Through the renovation process we have tried to do a number of things to fix the problem-areas. One was to use foam insulation everywhere to keep the snow from melting in the first place and cause ice. Another thing we did was add a foot-or-so overhang around the whole house so the gutters hang from it instead of sitting on top of the walls (and it gave an extra foot of area to foam and seal up better). We also replaced the entire roof (since we found 3 roof leaks caused by the ice too...that insurance wouldn't pay for, I might add) and had a fantastic little overhang built to cover the front entrance.

I can't help but smile when I see the picture below. I'm sitting in the truck...super prego (one day past my due date with Henry) and watching with excitement as the crew starts tearing apart my house!

A few hours later that day I saw this progress... (wow these guys were fast)
A few hours after seeing this progress we were off to the hospital to have baby #4! It was great being in the hospital knowing that there were people working to put our house back together. It's one of the only projects we hired out and we're so glad for our friends who came through for us in a big way!

The house still pretty much looks like this...
The roof went from all brown (which I hated since it severely limited my exterior paint color options)...to a mix of gray/black/brown/blue. I don't have a great picture that shows that but you'll see it in the future when I post more exterior progress.

When we decided to do the overhang over the front door...we didn't know the scale to make it. Normally Cape Cods with overhangs like this also have dormers...and we weren't ready to take on another project like that. So an architect friend did a quick drawing for us that we handed to the contractor. The funny thing about experienced contractors though, is that they can pretty much make things look right no matter what. He took a look at the sketch below and started building. We're really happy with the scale.

We hope to have the foundation for the front overhang poured sometime soon, and eventually (maybe this winter???) we'll have gutters installed and get all new siding and trim. Below is the inspiration picture for the front-door overhang. Ours obviously isn't exactly like it but will have the same 'eyebrow' design and someday we have big plans for some stone and shutters to beautify it.

Sigh...I know it looks rough now...but it's fun to see past that and imagine what it will be!


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