This crazy Massachusetts winter . . .

I am not doing well on my New Years resolution!  Between work and the winter, I have not had much time to write.  In case you haven’t heard, we have gotten just about a storm per week here in Massachusetts and I have done more shoveling in one season than I have in my entire life.  We are definitely saving up for a snowblower next season!

Here’s a look at the ranchalow beneath all the ice and snow:

Since these pictures we’ve gotten more snow, more ice, raked off the roof, and removed those pesky icicles.

And this is what’s been happening inside this winter:

(a whole lot of nothing!)

2010 in review

Happy New Year!  I started a blog in 2010, and here’s a review of the year from wordpress:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,800 times in 2010. That’s about 12 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 45 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 242 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 164mb. That’s about 5 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was April 16th with 118 views. The most popular post that day was Bye bye, leaves!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were retrorenovation.com, facebook.com, oldhouses.com, homeownersinsurance.org, and ranchalow.blogspot.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for ranchalow, project ranchalow, types of lilies, blown in insulation from inside, and blown insulation holes.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Bye bye, leaves! April 2010

2

Before & After March 2010

3

About Us March 2010
3 comments

4

Floors: finished! Furniture: moved! April 2010
3 comments

5

Drumroll, please . . . July 2010
4 comments

 

My new year’s resolution is to post more often!

That’s (sort of) a wrap!

We are as done as we are going to be with the exterior of the house!  It’s taken way longer and way more money and we’re not even technically done, but what can I say – I’m learning that this is the nature of the beast (i.e. owning an old house and doing work yourself).

This weekend we finished painting the siding inside the porches, finished painting all the doors (front, back, and barn door), re-framed the back door, put lots of crap away AND made a first crack at leaf collection!

Here’s the back door, which we re-framed, and the barn door, which is now yellow!

Here’s the front door (open to the inside), which is also yellow.

Here’s the front of the house – we still need to get gable vents, and apparently our shape is an odd one.  So of course that’s a $300 special order.

The side of the house – the paint is so white!

What we still have left to do and will probably have to wait until the spring is the porches: painting the outside, re-screening, painting the floors.  As you can see from this picture, the little deck that the pumpkins are on is a mess of chipping paint.

We need to do this on the back porch too.  Plus, we really need to get our grass in shape.  But it will all have to wait till next year.  For now, I breathe a sigh of relief.

Last night some parents of trick or treaters told us that they’ve been watching our progress, that the house looks great, and that they are impressed with us for doing the work ourselves.  Wow!  That makes the completion feel even better!

Siding status: sealing and priming

We made some great progress this weekend!  Chuck primed one side of the house, while Matt just about finished replacing clapboards and I  painted doors and the inside of the front porch where the clapboards weren’t covered up.  I even removed screen so we can rescreen the porches!  And we have yellow doors now!

Sorry this picture is slightly blurry.

This yellow is somewhat jarring in this picture . . . I hope it’s the light?

Look how beautiful the final product will be!

Siding status: removing and replacing

After a weekend of work, we’re in good shape!  We not only took down ALL of the aluminum (can’t wait to take that to be recycled!), but we also made great progress with removing damaged clapboards and replacing them with new ones.  And my brother took down that god awful antenna that’s been driving me insane for the past year.  Good stuff.

So, here’s Chuck pulling aluminum off.  It took pretty much all week to get it all down.

And here’s just a fraction of all the aluminum that’s come down, along with my favorite antenna.

Here’s the south side of the house with the aluminum down and my father and brother working their butts off.  Look at those beautiful holes!

Here’s Tito watching from the dining room with his beverage of choice.

Matt loves ladders!  Obviously, the front of the house is a giant mess.

This is what’s under the clapboards.  Brown paper.  No Tyvek back then!

This is my dad demonstrating clapboard removal – chisel plus hammer plus “caressing.”  We’re pretty sure he actually meant “finessing.”  Oh well – must be gentle!  Those clapboards are pretty fragile and we’ve already had some crack.

Next step: Tyvek.

Then replacing with new ones!  Look at that beautiful siding!

Here’s the final product, along with the corners done!

Looking good.

These pictures were taken during my dad’s demo for us – I swear, we did work after!  Now we just have to replace all clapboards.  And paint the house and doors.  And rescreen.  And put up new lattice under the porches.  Anything else?  OY.

1940′s kitchens!

I couldn’t resist posting this great article from Retro Renovation with wonderful pictures of 1940′s kitchens.

This ad is my favorite – check out Aunt Grace clapping excitedly from her chair about her niece’s new oven!  Wowie!

Stealing thunder

We had a very special helper last night: our bff Laura!  She has seen the ranchalow through many stages – she’s helped us move (multiple times), pull down wallpaper, sand walls, and has even taken the occasional nap on our porch while Matt and I work (in her defense, it was the day after he brother’s wedding).    But last night she got really serious – and competitive – when pulling down siding.  She got mad at me when I pulled out “her” nails, wanted to race me, and accused me of stealing her thunder when we worked on removing the same piece.  Her mother, gardener extraordinaire Mrs. D., is also known for her competitive streak.  I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!

We started on the north side, but then moved on to the south side.  We are now OFFICIALLY the ugliest house on the block.  Hopefully we can remedy that before the end of September.

But we’re making progress!

We’re back and ready to work!

If anyone is actually reading this, I apologize for my long absence! Matt, Tito and I were busy enjoying the summer and we spent lots of time away from the ranchalow doing all sorts of fun things.  Now we’re back.  And we’re ready to work.

First thing first: the siding.  The aluminum is finally coming down!  We’ve started on the north side of the house and in the back porch.  The good news is that the clapboards underneath look pretty great!  The bad news is that the siding is more difficult to take down than we thought it would be.  Lots of nails, sharp aluminum, and having to work on a ladder are going to make this part of the project difficult.

Here’s what the spots in the porch look like.  Those holes for insulation, as we suspected, wrap around the house at two levels.  Those clapboards will need to be replaced.

Here’s the window frame.  It doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would.

Our plan is to recycle the aluminum at about 35 cents per pound.  We’ve found 10 inch primed cedar clapboards in 16 foot sections for only $41.44 – what a steal!  And they deliver for free!  My wonderful brother will be staying with us for a few weeks before he moves to the west coast, and he’ll be helping us with painting.  And we talked to an electrician yesterday who helped us remove the electrical meter box from the side of the house so that we can remove the siding and get underneath.  He, of course, found a million other things for us to do, so we may be having more electrical work done than we bargained for – but at 70 years old, it certainly needs updating.

So that’s that!  I’ll be updating more regularly now so that you can see the progress.  I hope this project goes smoothly!

More pretty things

Even more lilies blooming in the front flower bed – they look and smell gorgeous! Stargazer, Tiger, and Casablanca (I think?), oh my!

UH OH.

We removed a piece of siding.  And this is what we found.

Holes.  Seriously.

We think they must have blown in insulation at some point, and that the holes go all around the house at that level, and possible above the windows as well.   Goodness.

So this means we’ll need to replace far more siding than we thought.  Which means that the job will take more time and money.  Which means that if we’re going to start and get it done before the fall, we need to start now.  Which means that we have to make a decision.  And this decision is no longer as easy as we thought.

We definitely want to do this.  Because we will like the way it looks and because we think it will add value to the house.  But we also want to try to grow grass, and this is not inexpensive or easy either.  There’s so much to do, but a limited amount of resources and effort.

Decisions, decisions.