Hello, friends! Welcome back to Week(end) #3 of working on our soffits ~ tearing down the old pressed board soffits, and rebuilding with Hardie cement board. Mr. Ethereal took Friday and Monday off again. He has worked so hard…
He has worked hard (hence the grumpy face as I take a picture)… He just wants to work without distraction. I document for the future…
Btw, if you haven’t read Part 1 ~ Summer Projects: Major DIY Demolition Around Our House and a Little Remodeling Fun, definitely catch that up first!
Here, sometimes you use what you have as a scaffold. 😉 The actual scaffold we rented is inside the backyard, so Mr. Ethereal was working back and forth between the two locations last Friday. Scaffolding is wonderful for standing on, but it is tough when you need to take it apart and move it. So, for this area, Charles just used his sketchy, makeshift lifts, and it works. 😀
Hubby asked me to drill holes and then he stole my phone to take a couple of photos. I had no idea he was photographing, but I am glad he enjoyed doing so surreptitiously.
He says it is payback for all the photos I take of him working. ;)’
In the courtyard, this area on the left did get totally finished, including caulking. Some of this will be altered in another month or so…
Extending the roofline & adding “boxes”
We talked with Tucker from The Gutter Factory, who comes highly recommended, about adding larger gutters to help move rainwater away from the house. However, after more discussion over the course of an hour, we told him about our idea of extending the roofline to get water off and away from the kitchen and bedroom doors.
My thought was to eventually make a three-season or four-season room, or someone in the future could.
But right now, we just need to get the rain away from the kitchen door as heavy rains would back up and pour out the back of the old gutters and have dry-rotted the door surround. Ugh! 🙁
Tucker drew up some plans for extending the roofline, gave us quotes for different parts of the job (for now and in the future), and we are soldiering on with the soffits. We are now leaving the ends open for the alterations.
I love the rendering and wish we could center the windows, but our primary bedroom closet is behind most of the boarding on the right side of the wall facing the camera. We could move the window a bit but then it wouldn’t be centered from inside the living room, so it will probably stay off-center from the patio.
I love the idea of changing out the three windows of the lower section with a “combination window,” which is a larger picture window flanked by two double-hung windows. We may end up taking out the upper three windows to make the patio and living room a little more au currant, as well.
We already spoke with Tucker about raising the window up since there will be reframing happening anyway.
Currently, very few of our windows can be opened to let in spring or fall breezes because of dirt, age of the windows, a security system installed by previous owners, and the house settling. Changing out the windows will help to air the house out so much better. I usually stand on window sills and grunt heavily as I try to pry open the side kitchen window on lovely mornings. That window will probably change out, too.
Making boxes
Several of our neighbors have these “boxes,” really triangular extensions, built at the end of each of their eaves. These take the place of the funky 1990s little mini eave-endings many of us have at the ends of our house eaves.
These “boxes” prevent critters from sitting up on these extensions and chewing their way into your home.
Something we definitely need!
We may be able to start building these boxes next weekend, just depends upon the heat and upon getting the underboards up. We can always caulk later, but Charles is trying to get everything done on each side so we don’t have to go back (and have to remember) over a spot.
I am coming along behind and touch-up painting those same boards I painted on the ground now for black fingerprints and protecting the screws we are using. I also am filling any big gaps with mortar and painting that the next day.
Mr. Ethereal pulled down the soffit on the south side on Saturday morning and spent the rest of the day cleaning out the debris and pieces of board, vacuuming rat poo out of the cavity, and then stapling in 1/4″ hardware cloth.
Why the metal hardware cloth? Because the rats can’t get their teeth around the little squares to chew holes in it to then work their way inside.
We also removed the old top sill plates (? word), and are replacing those as they were poorly done when the house was built (really shoddy workmanship, friends… so disappointing!). I was chipping out the old mortar so we can install full-size, not just scrap wood, sills to span to each side of each window.
Here you can see where I have cleared out the old mortar atop the right-hand brick and have yet to do the same with the left side. See how the window is literally held in with a screw?… What in the world??… Can’t wait to have the money to replace all of our windows, but for now it will just be a few.
The new top plate will span above these two bricks and underneath the 2×4 above. I was saying to Charles that I wish we could leave this open to expose the new headers. Wouldn’t lengths of cedar look fantastic?!! Tucker talked about making an exposed cedar beam for the new roofline extension, which I LOVE that idea.
Mr. Falcon comes everyday now to sit in the birdbath while chirping smaller birds scold him…
He may be out hunting, but he also likes to stand in the cool water I try to refill twice a day.
Visiting Acme Brick, Tile & Stone
With the changes to the eave ends, we need brick to replace what is being taken away, so off to Acme Brick we went! We were both pretty worn out from this weekend’s 103-104 degree heat (which = 40 deg. Celsius), so we took yesterday off.
A little side note: I had my mini meltdown on Saturday afternoon when I was feeling sick around 3:00p.m., and Hubby had his yesterday morning (just worn out), so it was a good thing we didn’t do any strenuous work at all.
Monday’s temps ended up at 108 deg. (42.2 deg. C.), and today’s temperature is the same at 3:30pm as I write this epistle.
You’d think we were in Las Vegas! Thankfully, with the extreme heat in North Texas, the humidity dropped and it is only 28%. We now have a “dry heat.” And… the best part??? No mosquitoes as they are all down at the ponds. BIG WIN!
Seriously, though, we are taking breaks every half-hour and drinking tons of flavored mineral water and filtered water every time we sit down. I keep our thermoses full; Charles keeps the ice maker unstuck so we can have ice. It’s a winning combination! 😉
But, back to bricks…
We drove over to Acme’s showroom, which is fairly close to our home, picked out some bricks which are similar to our actual home’s bricks, and were made by Acme some 35 years ago).
A young man drove over a “strap” of bricks (132 bricks, I think) on a forklift, and after moving around all the debris which needs to go to the dump on the next trip, he settled the pallet onto our truck bed.
Now we just have to unload it all, lol!
I might get some of them out tomorrow morning and begin piling them in stacks close to each eave. I guess we will need 40 bricks per corner to complete. Thank the Lord we have that Better Homes & Garden wheelbarrow we picked up at a garage sale the first year we were here! I’d hate to move every brick by hand…
Might need to go back for more bricks, but we shall see. We will need to pick up some “Type N” mortar, too, to set the bricks. I already have the tools and have been practicing using it to smooth mortar when I put some around the foundation and repaired pieces which fell out of our bricked mailbox last weekend.
The adventure continues, my friends! We are worn out after each weekend, but the soffits are looking really good! I have priced new steel doors for the two doorway openings, and Lowes installer said they can set them for around $700 total, above the cost of each door (about $580 each, currently on sale), when we are ready to install them.
We need to redo all the boards inside the patio first, also with cement board or stucco.
Oh, and the “pre-corns” are already falling… Most are small, but some are full size and green. That’s my new joke for “early acorns” ~ pre-corns ~ based off of the movie with Tom Cruise, Minority Report, about putting people in prison based upon the thoughts and the “precognitions” of three triplets who float in a water tank in order to see “pre-crimes.”
At least the squirrels are being fed, but it says we might have an early winter to me… They were literally dropping on August 1st along with the very last of last year’s brown leaves…
Now you know WHY we are racing to get as much done as we can, even in this beastly heat. We are already running out of time…
My hope is to be ready to begin adding insulation back by October 1st, and to have all these other things done by then to prepare for winter.
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The craziness continues… 😉
