Tag: #exteriortrim

But the details are coming together. . .

So this will be mostly another visual update, because most of my writing energy has been going into a third round of edits for the book.

The great news, though, is that 2 1/2 weeks-post-vacation (and with 8 days to go before we head back to NC to get Owen moved back in at school), the needle is moving once again.

The front porch is tantalizingly close to being officially done

The front porch is done and painted.

The only bit of work that remains is to connect the electrical for the ceiling fans (they are now temporarily, and, if you ask me, somewhat unsafely) wired into a heavy-duty extension cord that’s plugged into an outlet (yes, it’s a GFI outlet) behind the right side of the porch, in an alcove area where we have a faucet, and sometimes store random tools, coolers, etc.

For now, rather than turning the fans on and off with the switch they’re supposed to be connected to just inside the front door, someone tall has to pull the chains to get them going. Or if no one tall is nearby, I have to climb up on the Adirondack chairs so I can reach the chains. Not the worst thing. First world problems.

It makes my heart happy that my wind chimes are now hanging back in their rightful spot.

The rest of the exterior trim is at least in place now

Even if it might not be painted until . . . I don’t know. I can’t even guess at that.

Meanwhile, I’m lobbying for some type of decorative bracket detail to enhance all these plain overhangs we have.

And, one last, big surprise

The drawings for the house always had one exterior design element that I knew we’d get to. Eventually.

Well, “eventually,” at least in that context, has arrived.

Behold: cupolas!! Not one, but two. One for the house, and one for the garage. Mama-Cupola and Teenager-Cupola.

Mama-Cupola is over six feet tall. Teenager-Cupola is about four feet tall.

I’ve also ordered two proportionally-sized copper finials, to add a final, crowning touch to their tops. For now. Eventually maybe we’ll find a weathervane we love for Mama, but the finials are going to look really cool. They should get here within the next two – three weeks.

The cupolas arrived yesterday, and Tim started painting them (well, Teenager, anyway) to match the rest of the exterior trim (whenever that gets done) almost immediately, a sign that he’s as excited to see them in place as I am.

Teenager cupola will go up first. Maybe even today. There’s a ladder leaning up against the garage as I’m typing this.

Not for the faint-of-heart

This will be a challenging and potentially dangerous undertaking. Thankfully, each cupola has 3 pieces – the base, the sides, and the roof. Otherwise we’d need a crane to get them in place. The boys are both here to add manpower (and stability), and I suspect we’ll have some help from the neighbors, too.

If I don’t get recruited, I’ll be cringing somewhere, stealing occasional glimpses of the progress through my fingers, which will be clamped firmly over my eyes.

 

Painting can take a long time when it’s done by someone who really cares about what they’re doing. My contractor/husband joked as he was prepping the porch at the end of last week, filling nail holes, sanding, and caulking that, “the effing carpenter always leaves a mess for the painter to fix.”

If you’re just tuning in, Tim is both the carpenter and the painter, which is why, when he made his carpenter complaint with great mock seriousness, I burst out laughing. He’s also the electrician, and the plumber, and the framing guy, and the roofer on this decade-long project, for which the exterior trim work is almost literally the icing on the cake.

Forty Years of Experience, and . . .

Of course, there are other things that might slow one’s progress when painting a front porch besides excellent attention to detail. Such “things” might include situations in which the painter/carpenter, who’s been doing this sort of work for over 40 years, is distracted and gets stymied by setbacks like falling backward off the stepladder (because he lost his balance while looking up, for the second time in 2 days, ignoring his wife’s admonition when she witnessed it on day one, that he move the ladder when the overhead work got too close to vertical, thus avoiding the type of circustance in which his dizziness is more triggered).

Another example of something that might cause painting to move more slowly would include improperly setting up a sixteen-foot 2×10 on the saw table (which had nothing to do with the porch – it was for a side project), thus dropping one of the very heavy cut sections onto the top of his foot.

Gratefully, no serious damage was done in either instance, but both incidents, understandably, more or less shut down progress for each of the days on which they occurred.

Yet Progress There Was

And it’s looking beautiful (despite the clutter):

The Brief Saga of the Ceiling Fans

We went and picked ceiling fans a few weeks ago. I was happy to not have to be particularly picky for a change. After all, logic told me, they’re outdoor fans. They don’t have to be fancy. They just need to be functional, and not be at complete stylistic odds with the house’s exterior architecture.

Tim disagreed vigorously with the style I chose, but we came to a cease-fire position and picked them up last week. Cease-fire, that was, until he hung one.

The style itself, surprisingly, wasn’t at issue, though. The ceiling clearance was. And normally, cutting the downrod wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but in this case, due to the way the wiring was done, it was an issue, and, even if he could have cut the downrod, he couldn’t have cut it short enough to put the blades at a height he was going to be able to abide.

So that fan has taken up temporary residence on the dining room table. I’m thinking today might be the day it goes back into its box.

Tim went searching online and found a similar style, outdoor rated, but low-profile, so they’ll be closer to the ceiling. They shipped yesterday. No clue when they’ll arrive, but I’m hoping it’s before we leave for vacation in a week and a half.

And the Bathroom Doorknob

The bathroom doorknob arrived right when it was supposed to last Friday. It’s been sitting on the credenza in my office ever since, exactly where you’d expect to find a doorknob.

Another thing on the list of “stuff I hope gets done before vacation.”