Week 28 - Move In

7:30 Monday morning the dumpster people came and hauled it away. It's very strange not to have a big orange box at the curb.

I finally began painting the porch itself, which was the last place left outside and, by the end of the week, except for a few areas of trim and some touch-ups, the outside painting was done. Truthfully, the parking lot side of the garage only has one coat of primer and one coat of paint, but that's all it's going to get this year because the weather has turned and I have lots of other stuff to do.

Once again the internet came in handy this week when I had to decide on the placement for my house numbers. I created a picture showing the front and the different placements I was considering, and solicited opinions and suggestions.

I finally went with a vertical arrangement on one of the posts that was not one of my original ideas. It was suggested by one of my brothers-in-law (thanks Keith). So that is finished as well.

The last piece of vinyl siding that needed to be done was the rooftop piece at the base of the bedroom window. The missing siding was one reason that the torchdown roof was not secured in this corner. The vinyl siding was one course short and the bottom of the lowest course was somewhat damaged. All of this left the top edge of the torchdown exposed.

My solution was to cut off the nailing slots off the top of a piece of siding and creating a full overlap of one course. Since I was working under the siding already in place I ended up having to nail through the face of the lowest course in a couple of places and caulk the nails, an inelegant, but serviceable, and virtually unseen solution. Eventually all of this siding will be replaced.

One fun little task was to winnow the buckwheat which I had harvested from my own back yard a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure what I'll do with it besides replant it back into the yard, but I might do some more research and experiment with cooking some of it. It isn't like I have anything else to do.

I also retrofit the last rain barrel which lives behind the garage with an outlet and overflow. I held off on this one because I was hoping to find one that matched the other two but I haven't so far and the weather is changing.

Inside the house, I put down enough of the baseboards in the office that it was possible to actually move in! The rest won't go in until I the door casings are finished.

Furniture has reduced on the room's echo potential. It will be even better when I get the rug down. I also have things that go up on the walls, but for now I can't bear to actually put holes in my new walls, so that will have to wait a while. One nice benefit to the new space is the windows. The room is so light that I do not need to turn on any lights until after dark. I wish that were true in the rest of the house.

At the end of the week, I spent some time cleaning. That was one thing I didn't expect about the project, how much cleaning I would have to do and how often. After that, although I still had several more important things to do, I decided to play a little and began painting the living room.

It doesn't show very well in the picture but the color is a sort of rich green. It was remixed from one gallon of the light green, low-biocide paint I got to do the office and living room. It was mixed to match a swatch I brought in, but was still off when I got home, so I added blue mixing pigment that I had from an old project. In other words, this is a TOTALLY custom color that I will never be able to match.

As a reminder, this is how the same corner looked at the beginning of the whole project.

Week 29 - Finishes