A Facelift for the Front and the Back

It has been just under two months since we made the move into the Zeller House. It's amazing how fast one becomes comfortable in discomfort. Not that the house is really uncomfortable, but it is still very much a work in progress and will continue to be for quite some time. I think the most progress has been made on curbing Ryan's house burnout. He worked such long hours with only as many days off as I could count on one hand for so long. He has dropped about 25 pounds in the last year and I knew that if he continued to work that hard, the work on our house would become a chore that he dreaded. Of course it's tough to muster up the energy to build a house in all your spare time, but we've started to pepper in a little more time to relax or at least keep the rest of our lives in order. I'm not talking about lots of time, but for the first time we didn't work today, partly so I could finally get this up.

Actual progress on the house is relatively slow since I am back to work and Ryan is working at least four days a week away from home. However, the work that we have done is highly visible and some of the most satisfying to date. We did a bunch of work on the front of the house. This was in the plan, so that besides painting the brick portion of the house, the exterior would be done well before winter set in. We removed the old, rotting trim on all seven of the front windows and replaced it with a PVC product that requires no maintenance and will not rot. It looks just like wood on the front. If you check out the pictures of the front of the house, you'll see what a huge difference new window trim makes. In addition to the trim, Ryan spent a few painstaking days repairing some parts and replacing others on the overhang that frames the front door. We really wanted to save it and it was actually in fairly good shape. Some of the wood had to be replaced and we used the PVC for that as well. The metal roofing was shot and that is what really took the longest to replace, but the result is great. We finally picked out a light fixture for the front as well. When we bought the house, the front door was flanked by two small fixtures, but with the great little overhang, we decided to switch the light location to to a single hanging fixture. Exterior light fixtures can really emtpy your wallet! The front door hardware is an aged bronze that is almost black, so we went with a black metal fixtures that is in a lantern style. We found one that would receive a compact flourescent bulb. It's nice to have some light outside the front door at night. While we waited for the much anticipated front door for the house, we prepared everything else. The reason for all this work on the front was that we were in the process of switching banks and were hoping for a much higher appraisal from the new bank. Ryan and I actually had some trouble figuring out what we wanted to do for the front stoop. When we bought the house it consisted of one red brick step and one step made from a slab of stone. We saved the big slab since we intially thought we would reuse it, but we're still not sure if it's limestone or marble. We kept thinking about what we could do with brick, but kept coming up short of anything we were really excited about. Finally we decided to go with slate. Ryan poured two concrete steps to be the base for our stoop. We covered about the same footprint as the old stoop. The bottom step is low and wide and the top step is much smaller and takes you up to the front door. He found some nice slate and came up with an impromptu design. The stoop looks simple and clean yet fairly traditional, since we are trying to maintain the historical integrity of the front of the house. Finally, we got the news that our front door was done. If you remember from previous posts, a local crafstman was making our front door out of hemlock we salvaged from the old floor joists in the house. He is also re-miling the wide plank flooring we removed from the house so that we'll be able to re-install it in the entire downstairs except for where we have concrete floors.. When we finally got the door, it was more than I could have hoped for. I think a front door is one of the most important pieces of a house. The eye is drawn to the door as center-point and the port of entry into the home. We picked out a simple set of hardware and he isntalled that as well as the glass for the six small windows at the top. It felt great to finally get the door in. Once in a while, we'll hear voices outside the front as if some is at the door. When we go check it out it turns out that it's someone stopped to admire the new door! The door is made of beautiful old wood that didn't require any new trees to be cut down. It was made locally and cost hundreds, maybe even a thousand less than a commerically manufactured door of the same style would have cost us.

We were brushing our teeth in the kitchen for about two weeks, but during the last weekend in August, we finally tiled the countertop and backsplash in the second bathroom, which allowed us to put in the sink and faucet. Essentially, besides paint and some trim, that bathroom is done. After waiting almost a month to exchange the electric dryer we recieved in error, for our gas one, we finally have laundry in the house. It's been years since I used a new washer/dryer to do laundry between college and living in rental apartments for the past four years, so it's been almost fun and luxurious to do laundry in our new Fischer and Paykel set. It's digital and the choices are endless. You can choose to wash "regular" or comforters or sleeping bags or coats and of course all of the standard options. The great thing about the washer is that it is top-load, but it doesn't have an agitator (that thing that sticks up in the middle of most top-loaders). This allows you to wash big bulky items. The dryer is also a top-loader and has a huge capacity. It has a sensing feature, so it never continues to work after the clothes are dry. I have to say that it also has a great lint feature. Instead of scraping lint off that screen that never really gets clean, there is a container almost like a large plastic cup that sits inside the dryer. It fills with lint during the cycle and then you just dump out when the clothes are done.

During the second week in September we finally got our appraisal from the new bank. After much anticipation, the news finally came in and it was great! The house was appraised (in its current condition) for the exact amound we were hoping for. We close on the loan this coming Thursday.

The hemlock siding for the addition comes in this week. In the meantime, Ryan wanted to get the deck done, so he'd have somewhere to put the siding when it arrives. We had purchased a composite decking material back in the winter when it was on sale for about half its regular cost and it has been sitting in the backyard since then. The company is Cross Timbers. The material is made by combining Oak and polyproplyene. It is all around more durable and resistant to the elements. The finished look is extremely clean, because the fastening system is all hidden. The majority of the deck is a grey color and the trim is tan. Unfortunately, the industry still hasn't come up with a material or system for framing outdoor structures that does not involve pressure-treated wood, a product that is far from green. It's possible to use the Cross Timbers material to frame the deck, but the cost would be way out of the average person's range. As it is, the deck would have cost about $10,000 had we bought the material at regular price and paid someone to build the deck. I would say that the design and construction of the deck was one of the most amazing parts of the project to watch happen. Ryan has helped his dad out with a few decks and just built a small, simple deck at the other house he's working on, but ours turned out to be quite complicated, with lots of angles, cantilevered steps and a hemlock rail system.

Before the deck was actually built, the grunt work had to get done. First, we had six tons of stone delivered to the house. Since there is no way to back truck up to the back of the house, we had it dumped next to the garage. This meant that we had to shovel and wheel-barrow the stone up to the foundation all around the back of the house. Since most to the deck work required skill, I found myself doing a lot of stone work. The finished deck wraps 38 feet around the back of the house and we distributed the stone about three inches thick, four feet out from the side of the house and ten feet out from the back. The deck runs along the side of the house from the back door into the mud rooom, past the side door to the sun room and back around the rear of the house where it is about ten feet long, twelve feet if you count he step that connnects it to the backyard. The railing will be hemlock posts with stainless steel cable between. The posts are already in, but the cable will probably go in once we get to the stairs inside. We are planning to tie together some of the interior and exterior designs of the house. The railings of the interior stairs and exterior will be made of the same materials. Once the stone was down, Ryan used shovels and a post-hole-digger to do exactly that, dig the holes for the posts. He then set the posts in concrete and began framing the deck and steps. Although it was tough to wrap a step along the entire back side of the deck, it was a very important element in the design of our deck. I think decks are tricky, because often they can cut off a backyard from the house, but I wanted a deck and I wanted it to flow into the yard as well as the house. I decided that this meant no railing on the yard-facing side of the deck. This in turn lead us to a low design. However, I didn't want the deck to be so low that it felt more like a patio, so we decided on one wide step down to the yard. The finished product is amazing! It was a relatively quick visual change and I think it flows seamlessly into both the yard and the house. We don't have any furniture for the deck yet, but then again we didn't think we'd have so many 80 degree October days...

Although it's still so warm, we'd like to get the house ready for heat, so we don't get caught off guard when it drops into the 30's. You'll remember that we're using cast iron baseboard. The second floor plumbing is ready to receive the baseboard. The first floor piping still needs to be run from the basement and it all needs to be connected to the water heater. Once we start using the heat, we'll also need the ventilation system running since the house is so tightly built. Once the heat is hooked up and ready to go at a moment's notice, Ryan and I will move outside to the siding. We need to get that done before winter really hits hard, but we'd rather be outside working in the cold than cold inside our house.

Photosite, where we had been posting all our photo galleries went out of business. I have been trying to find a site that allows me to post a link to the blog, rather than only "share" the photos with specific people. If someone can suggest a better way that is relatively easy, please let me know. For now, I have created a Snapfish account with the email address: zellerhouse@yahoo.com and the password zeller. Just go to www.Snapfish.com and enter that email address and password. The trick is to check out "Friends Albums" in the menu on the left when you login. You'll then be able to view all the photos of the house so far divided into 2006 and 2007. Most recent are obviously under 2007. Please let me know if this doesn't work or again if you have any suggestions. Enjoy!