July 13, 2010 – trinalin thinks things through

I sure haven’t posted much this summer. Been spending a lot of the time just enjoying my time off. Visit mom often to go swimming in her association’s pool. Play WoW. Go to concerts in downtown Troy (those of you following me on Twitter have seen a few posts about that). Avoiding doing anything regarding school (which is going to be unfortunately later on when I think “Why didn’t I digitize those VHS tapes like I was going to this summer?!?!?”)

Anyhoo, one of the things I’m doing this summer (to elsaf‘s potential delight, I suspect) is residing my house and garage. I decided that I wanted to use HardiePlank for the job. Originally, wanted the main house in HardieShingle and the gables in HardiePlank, but that proved to be very expensive. So I flipped ’em around. Going to get HardiePlank lap siding for the main house and the straight edge shingles for the gables.

Six years ago, I had the house painted. I had hoped I could go at least 10 years before painting again. But that was not to be. The south wall is by far the worst of the bunch. But it’s more than painting that needs doing. The cedar shingles are dying. Several are cracked. And some are falling off. So I decided to reside the house, and chose the HardiePlank product.

I almost went with Home Depot doing the job (almost typed Office Depot – heh), even so far as having a contract signed, when I found out there were other contractors who could do the job for less. (Thanks to Mike the Builder who put me in touch with the folks. Mike’s the one who built mom & dad’s house. He’s a great guy and has a ton of stories, all of which are entertaining.)

They began the job today. They’re working on the garage now. And one of the things Jeff has promised to do is square up the garage (which either was built crooked originally, or has gotten askew over the years).

Heh heh – just had to pause in my writing since Jeff and the boys needed a length of chain to help them pull in the two sides of the garage and asked if there was anyone in town I could borrow some from. My first thought was to my cousins. Bill wasn’t in, but Mick was, and he happened to have a length of chain the right size. Since he’s just two blocks away (and I mean P Hill blocks, not proper city blocks) I walked. While carting the box home, one of my co-workers spied me and offered me a drive home. God, I love my town. 😉

Anyhoo, I know you’re all chomping at the bit to see some photos of the before and during, so here goes.