The Pumpkin House, or "Is that Primer?"

Newly painted house with newly chopped poor tree. More on the tree in another post.

Certainly we had planned to paint long ago, but took this project, too, a step at a time. Before we toured for 10 months, I prepped and primered the house.


The house had was all white as pictured above. Using a good friend's computer program, Eleni and I decided on orange. Here is another before shot, this time the South side of the house:


And after:

There are some pretty high areas that required a tall ladder. After painting at such a height, I would recommend using a stand-off which helps move you further from the house (so you can see what you are doing) and secures the ladder.


Still, don't look down.

Luckily, I had a couple of friends help me paint, including Mike (Tofu Mama).

The house is not yet finished -- more hard work to come this Spring including the window trim and porticos. The porticos will be grey.

We will also need to take apart most of our old windows and re-rope them. Luckily we have no other long tours planned, so I will be home to complete these projects.

For now, we are very happy with our new pumpkin house. Even if a couple people asked "Is that primer?" hopefully. We are happy our home is a part of the colorful houses of Cleveland Holloway.

From Duplex to Single Plex -- New Window!

When we bought our house in November 2005, it was a duplex, complete with a wall running through the front room.

After several tours and other repairs (and after Eleni recovered my password so I could blog again!) I finally replaced one of the doors with an old four-over-one window (pictured in the middle).

I bought the window itself at Peter's Design Works a couple of years before installing the window this past summer.

It's nice to have a window here now providing more natural light. To complete this project, I first removed the door. Then, I framed in the window (after measuring the space), cut out and nailed the plywood to the wall (to cover up the gap from the door), stapled a vapor barrier onto the plywood to keep out drafts and water, then reused old siding from another project and nailed this over the plywood.

Then it was time to shimmy the window into the space, and line up to match the windows to the left and right (as much as possible). Last, I cut trim boards to cover the gaps in the right and left sides of the frame.

For the interior, I also cut and fitted the trim pieces onto the frame. I put insulation into the wall below the window, then covered this as well with drywall. I recycled pieces of baseboard from an old closet in the house, and nailed that in to match the existing baseboard.

Now, I just need to caulk the spaces and paint the trim.