Weekend #6: August 21st ~ Down the rehab highway from Drab

...and on it's way to FAB! This past weekend I worked on the outside of the house. In order for you to see the true transformations, you will need a before picture. This is what the house looked like when I picked it up here, in Gainesville, in June.


She looked pretty rough, huh?

No combination of letters can tell you how excited I was to get this house! I remember, as I struggled to get her off the porch and into the back of my Jeep, I was muttering to her about the obvious abuse, neglect and rush-job she had been through. Her siding was glued on in gobs AND nailed in. The nails had to have been driven through the glue while it was still wet. They were nearly impossible to get off and it became clear that all of her outside would need to be replaced after there was no way to get around the gouging and breaking.

At the beginning of July, James worked hard with me to get the interior (full of nasty smelling carpet and mouse droppings) cleaned out and the exterior stripped. I tried to remove as much of the siding as possible and ended up having to reinforce a wall on the inside. Here is our girl prepped to be smoothed out:



The only thing I could think to use to smooth out the exterior was a whole bunch of joint compound. That's what she got! I covered every blemish; filled in every crack, smoothed over all the bumps and then textured it all on Saturday night:





Sunday morning, I got up and worked on the tower. From the first time I looked at it, I knew this house was supposed to have a stone tower.... this was BEFORE I saw that every other Highland has a river-rock tower!!! There are currently two others in production on Greenleaf Forum. I know one has the stone and I am curious to find out if Jackie will be doing the same. This was a long and messy process and I had to keep slopping the compound on to accommodate for the size of the rocks. Even though it was time consuming, I really like how it turned out:



Later that night, the rest of the house, the dry parts, got a coat of interior house paint from Valspar. I'm not sure what color the paint is called. It was on the clearance shelf, so we will just call it Discounted Brown. It's kind of a taupe. Reminds me of makeup foundation. The color suits her!!


She is currently getting new trim around all the windows, to be painted a darkish brown color. I think it will give it a nice pop. No pictures of that yet... it is a long, boring process cutting sticks for trim. *sigh* She can also look forward to getting a balcony off the den, which will feature one, maybe two, comfy chairs; a small table and a telescope.

There will also be a, and maybe 4, window box(es) on the bottom floor. I really want to put the original deck on the front, but as you can see, she is out of room!!! The empty space will be a garage and will feature a type of door that I have seen down here a lot. They will need to be scratch built. Yippee! The space above is for a second floor deck. There was one of these on the house that I grew up in. My parents covered nearly the entire thing with potting plants of tomatoes and 9 gazillion different types of peppers and chilies.

Guess I better hop back on it!! I have been a little neglectful of it for the past few days. Trim is so dull!