I am sure that you have noticed that I haven’t posted much about the house we are renovating.  Today I wanted to update you on where we are the process.  Here is the house when we first purchased it.

Since we started work on the house in the Winter we wanted to get the exterior done while we had good weather.  So we tackled the concrete driveway.

We tackled the process of opening up the front deck, and even painting the beams white.

One other project that I haven’t posted about was the backside of the house.  Here is the back of the house when we purchased the home.

The front was sided and the siding was in great condition.  I selfishly wanted to replace it with gray siding but when you are renovating a house to sell you have to stick to your budget.  It is entirely different than renovating your own house where you save up and do what you want to do.  This is an investment and if something is good looking and in great condition you keep it.  Changing it to be another color just because I don’t want Kahki is frivolous and not money well spent.  The back of the house was completely another story.  Here are the problems.

1. The siding was painted grey wood.  It didn’t match the front.
2. The siding was rotted in places from rain and snow and it also had been ravaged by woodpeckers and other animals creating small holes.  Animals could get in which is not fun when a squirrel chews through your electrical cords.
3. All the electrical wires from the basement were in a electrical tube on the outside.  This is fine, but so ugly.  Its also better for the wires if they are in the walls.
4. There were not many windows which meant that the basement wasn’t getting much light.  The dingy, scratched up by a dog, old sliding glass door was not helping brighten the basement up.
5. The door on the end was scratched and old as well.

Fixing the backside of the house was a necessary fix.  Animals entering in walls and rot where not okay. So here was the plan to get it done.  This is in the exact order that we had to do it.

1. Meet with a few siding contractors and get prices and quotes and pray that they can match the siding to the existing siding.  The good news is the former owner picked a basic color so it was matchable.
2. Change out the sliding glass door for a new, energy effiecient door.  The old one was dingy and didn’t let much light in the basement.
3. Adding new windows (where none existed) was out of the budget.  Replacing the doors was in the budget, so we spent a little money to upgrade to a  door with a window.
4. Replace the existing windows
5. Run the electircal wire inside the house.
6. Replace the siding.

We did 2, 3, and 4 ourselves and we contracted out the siding job.  Of course, when you renovate to sell you want to do as much work as you can.  A few years ago we would not have done the electrical but since, the siding was off and it was something that my husband had learned to do by working with a contractor, we were able to do this.  Siding was not worth our time and we would probably spend as much money trying to do it ourselves.  Plus you want to finish quickly so contracting out some jobs allows you to do other jobs alongside of the contractor.

The back of of the house looked like this…

Now it looks like this.

You can see the new door and the shiny new sliding door.  Do you see the plastic tube that is on the ground?  That was what housed the electrical wire.  Its gone and the wire is in the wall.

Much better!  There is more work to do on the exterior but its all the “lipstick” of the exterior.  What I mean, is things that re not necessary to the structure of the house but things that will make the outside look good…landscaping, shutters, new light, painted doors, refinished deck (which is necessary)  We will do more when the weather warms up but right now we are focusing on drywall and electrical to get ready for the fun stuff like Kitchen and bathrooms.

Do you have any new projects going on around your house that seem like forever to get to the fun stuff?  Do tell!

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer