New Year, New Project

Happy new year everyone. With this new year starts a new round of life and the opportunity to live it to its fullest everyday. If I have one new years resolution it is to live everyday to its fullest and live more in the moment not in the past or what the future might be but in this moment and what I can do with it right now. Along those lines we have started a new project (well, mostly Scott has started it for now). Our house is covered with aluminum siding. It is the only house in our neighborhood full of historic homes with aluminum siding. Most houses have been taken back to their original wood. Ever since we moved in we have wanted to see what was under the siding on our house and if possible take all of the aluminum off to bring ours back to wood and closer it's original look. Well, yesterday Scott started on this project, we picked a small wall at the back of the house and he started ripping off the siding, it was scary and exciting since we really had no idea what we were going to find. We were both pleasantly surprised to find the wood in such great condition. On the whole wall there are only two little spots that will need to be repaired and maybe replaced which is amazing considering we think the siding has been on for about 50 years. Scott did a lot in one day pulling off siding and sanding, then on day two he sanded a little more and put on a coat of sealer to keep the wood safe from the elements while we work on the rest of the house before we are able to paint the whole thing, which will be fun because we get to pick our own colors and our neighborhood is full of an array of different colored homes, green, purple, blue, yellow, orange...so we can pick any color we want and not even look out of place.

In the first picture you can see the aluminum siding at the top still on the house, the green on the right is some insulation then the bottom is the beautiful wood of the actual house. Scott stopped working for just a moment so I could take this picture. In the second picture all the siding is off the house so now you can see the wood at the top and the bottom has been painted with the sealer. The third picture is our first wall to complete what we are calling Phase 1, which is remove siding, sand and sealed. We are planning to move on to the next wall this week but Scott is taking a few days off to let his back and shoulders rest, he worked hard.