Day 1 - House repairs
Well today was our first day of work on the house. Overall it went pretty well, but Ben and I are both exhausted now. We probably got started around 11am and just finished, around 11pm.
We met several of our neighbors today, and they all are very nice. The house to the left of ours are renters, and they have a little boy who liked staring at our dogs but wouldn't pet them. He did poke Emi though :) The house to our right has a dog who apparently doesn't like our dogs, but we hope they get along eventually. Like Roman she doesn't like new people but once she gets to know you she's fine. The house next to that is a couple who has lived there for the past 7 years I think. They have the same original house floorplan as ours. We met the husband and showed him around our house. He wondered what work needed to be done since previous owners had added an addition to the house.
We started work in the bathroom. We needed to spray the ceiling and walls with mold-x and then scrape the paint and wallpaper off. Well when Ben tried on a respirator it didn't fit because of his beard. So he went home to shave while I diluted the mold-x and started spraying. When he got back we tried scraping the ceiling together. We soon found out that trying to scrape the paint into a garbage bag would not work so we had to make a home depot run to buy some tape and other stuff. When we took that break I was feeling short of breath (probably since you get less air when using a respirator). So he took over the scraping of the bathroom for the rest of the day.
While he did that I replaced the locks on the doors, scraped out the moldy caulk from the other bathroom (which was more difficult than I thought it would be), and took measurements of the walls for siding. At some point we took a break for dinner and then I walked the dogs while Ben continued scraping the ceiling.
We also found out that there were a bunch of wasp nests being built in the awning above our front door so at sunset Ben stopped work in the bathroom to go spray some stuff on them to kill them. That was exciting :D Luckily he didn't get stung by any. I hope they're all dead. We're supposed to wait 24 hours before trying to remove the nests. I wouldn't mind spraying them again just to be sure...
After the wasps were taken care of we decided to stop work for the night, take the dogs home, then go make a Lowes run to pick up siding supplies for tomorrow. By the time we got home and took care of the dogs and some other stuff it was 8pm. We got to Lowes around 8:30 and had an hour and a half before closing. Unfortunately all of the helpful employees who actually know about siding had left for the day (apparently they leave around 5pm). So we referred to our printed out vinyl siding installation manual and a little bit of help from an employee.
We got most of the supplies, except they didn't have starter strips and some piece that goes around the windows. We'll have to pick some up from Home Depot tomorrow morning. Anyway, the siding comes in 12 or 14 ft long strips (not sure exactly how long) and we had to figure out how to carry this home on the truck. By the time we finished tying everything to the rooftop and securing stuff sticking out of the truck it was 10pm. It made me realize that learning how to efficiently tie stuff down to a car roof is a useful skill... One which we don't have yet. Fortunately we did a good job of securing everything since nothing flew off the back of the truck on our drive back.
Finally we got back to the house, took everything inside, and went home. And tomorrow it starts all over again! My feet and back are killing me, but I'm still looking forward to more work.
We met several of our neighbors today, and they all are very nice. The house to the left of ours are renters, and they have a little boy who liked staring at our dogs but wouldn't pet them. He did poke Emi though :) The house to our right has a dog who apparently doesn't like our dogs, but we hope they get along eventually. Like Roman she doesn't like new people but once she gets to know you she's fine. The house next to that is a couple who has lived there for the past 7 years I think. They have the same original house floorplan as ours. We met the husband and showed him around our house. He wondered what work needed to be done since previous owners had added an addition to the house.
We started work in the bathroom. We needed to spray the ceiling and walls with mold-x and then scrape the paint and wallpaper off. Well when Ben tried on a respirator it didn't fit because of his beard. So he went home to shave while I diluted the mold-x and started spraying. When he got back we tried scraping the ceiling together. We soon found out that trying to scrape the paint into a garbage bag would not work so we had to make a home depot run to buy some tape and other stuff. When we took that break I was feeling short of breath (probably since you get less air when using a respirator). So he took over the scraping of the bathroom for the rest of the day.
While he did that I replaced the locks on the doors, scraped out the moldy caulk from the other bathroom (which was more difficult than I thought it would be), and took measurements of the walls for siding. At some point we took a break for dinner and then I walked the dogs while Ben continued scraping the ceiling.
We also found out that there were a bunch of wasp nests being built in the awning above our front door so at sunset Ben stopped work in the bathroom to go spray some stuff on them to kill them. That was exciting :D Luckily he didn't get stung by any. I hope they're all dead. We're supposed to wait 24 hours before trying to remove the nests. I wouldn't mind spraying them again just to be sure...
After the wasps were taken care of we decided to stop work for the night, take the dogs home, then go make a Lowes run to pick up siding supplies for tomorrow. By the time we got home and took care of the dogs and some other stuff it was 8pm. We got to Lowes around 8:30 and had an hour and a half before closing. Unfortunately all of the helpful employees who actually know about siding had left for the day (apparently they leave around 5pm). So we referred to our printed out vinyl siding installation manual and a little bit of help from an employee.
We got most of the supplies, except they didn't have starter strips and some piece that goes around the windows. We'll have to pick some up from Home Depot tomorrow morning. Anyway, the siding comes in 12 or 14 ft long strips (not sure exactly how long) and we had to figure out how to carry this home on the truck. By the time we finished tying everything to the rooftop and securing stuff sticking out of the truck it was 10pm. It made me realize that learning how to efficiently tie stuff down to a car roof is a useful skill... One which we don't have yet. Fortunately we did a good job of securing everything since nothing flew off the back of the truck on our drive back.
Finally we got back to the house, took everything inside, and went home. And tomorrow it starts all over again! My feet and back are killing me, but I'm still looking forward to more work.