Under Construction

Well, the time has finally come. The siding is going up! It has not really stopped raining for more than a couple of hours at a time, but we’re managing to work through. I’ve taken a few shots to show you some progress, so I’ll include captions as we go. This first set is what the house looked like last week: (This is the North, or road side of the house)(This is the west side. Our bedroom is through the patio doors on this deck, which is also the deck we tore off yesterday morning.)(Southwest side, with a window to Ty's room, and one to the kitchen. That's our well you see in the corner.)(South side, which used to be the back porch of the school house, but is now my kitchen)(Finally, the East side, or front of our house)

Saturday, Matt’s good buddy (also a Matt) came over and we spent the day cleaning up the property, clearing a bunch of junk, an old clothesline, some existing grapevines that we didn’t want or use, and we made good use of the dumpster we ordered to clean out the garage, which was desperately needed. I also managed to send a couple of old recliners home with the brother in law, and get rid of some other things inside the house.

Sunday, we had several of Matt’s buddies over and got all the old siding torn off in a matter of about 2 hours. This is what that job looked like. After the tear off, the contractor came over Sunday afternoon and the guys that were left wrapped the house in Tyvek since we were expecting nothing but rain this week. In the process, we decided that we really couldn’t afford NOT to remove the old deck that sits off our second story bedroom. SO, Matt and I both took the day off yesterday to get more work done in that area. Here is the back of the house, with and without the deck.
(with the deck, obviously.)(aaaaaand....without! The hubs had to remind me last night to stop him if he tried to go outside and pee during the night. Yep, we live in the country, peeing outside is pretty common.)

Yesterday morning, the contractor and his crew showed up and started work. The deck came off while they were setting up around the house, and the rain just got heavier and heavier until they couldn’t work anymore, and called it off at 10:00. Fortunately, they were sitting at home watching the radar, and they came back at 2:00 after the rain stopped and got a few more hours in. The siding was starting to go up on most sides of the house. This is what it looked like as of 5:00 yesterday evening.
Most recently, Matt decided to take today off as well, and he just sent me THIS picture of the front of our house, which was untouched as of yesterday.
One other very large part of the day was the "rainout". Yep, we were a tad discouraged when the crew left that morning, and proceeded to dig into the 30 pack of beer we had iced down for the "after party". This is what THAT looked like!

(the other Matt insisted on taking this picture. He thought it was pretty funny that we both put on green shirts that morning and we coordinated so nicely with the new siding. I also just noticed that the siding is pretty much the same color as the background of my blog! Ironic...)

He also told me that since HE’S been getting rained out at work so far both days this week anyway, he is thinking about just taking the rest of the week off to make sure everything gets done. After the siding is finished, they will also be building us a new deck to replace the old one. My job now is to get the INSIDE of the house cleaned up so we can have the family over for breakfast on Sunday and surprise them all. We decided not to tell his mom that we were finally doing the siding this week, so it’ll be a surprise when they come over.

One last shot, a picture of my two happy boys, posing for the camera, and actually SMILING.
That’s all for now, but its not even 2:00 yet, so I’m hoping by the time I get home it will look even better! More to come tomorrow, if all goes well!