Just Get Started ..
Progress .. October 2024
Everything begins with an idea.
Sometimes things live in the idea phase forever. Sometimes, the idea becomes a thing and it lives halfway completed for a really, really long time. This was the front of my house in Minnesota just two days before I was scheduled to make a drive across the country to my new home in Colorado.
Did it bring me any joy to know that the newly installed siding would not be painted before I left? Absolutely not. But did I find a little excitement in knowing that a project I’d been trying to coordinate for nearly a year had finally progressed? 100% yes. You see, in the spring a year prior, I decided it was time to upgrade from our in-wall a/c unit to a mini-split. The smaller unit wasn’t keeping us cool at night, and it was making far too much noise to concentrate on working from home. The problem with removing the a/c unit was that it left a gaping hole in the exterior wall of our house. Knowing that it would take some time to coordinate someone to patch and repair the siding, I came up with a temporary fix that involved re-using part of the old box that was used to encase/seal the unit and wall in the wintertime. Basically, I built a framework inside the wall that I could use to screw the 16” x 25” piece of painted particle board and surrounded/sealed the whole thing with Big Gap Filler spray foam insulation. Not pretty, but it would keep the outside out of the house.
Fast forward to fall of 2024, and lots had changed. My husband and I had made the decision to move back to Denver on a more permanent basis, where we’d already purchased a house in July. Because our new home was also a renovation project, and the crew had started demo stage in early August, we planned to stay in Minnesota through early October. My goal was to get the house ready for a potential renter while we were there, so my time was filled with finishing up all of the upgrade projects I had started since moving in. That’s a list for another time, but the point is that I was quickly running out of time to get all of the things done, and one of those was wrapping up this siding job.
The plan: use existing siding from the front of the house to patch the now re-framed and re-insulated (and drywalled inside) section of wall where the a/c unit used to be. The goal: hire a siding crew to install new LP siding on the entire front wall and complete said patch area on Friday, then paint new siding on Saturday afternoon. The problem: the siding that arrived on Friday morning was not the correct size. Can you believe it?! I can, and here’s why: by this point, I’d successfully wrapped up at least 6 other projects that had been in various stages of progression, and none of them had gone exactly according to plan. The thing about renovation and house projects, no matter how big or small, is that something always goes awry. You don’t have enough material or paint, you find that you don’t have the proper tool for the job and must go to the hardware store immediately, something you’ve ordered doesn’t come in on time, you cut the board too short and have to start over, etc. but part of the challenge is figuring out how to overcome said issue.
So, after receiving a new delivery with the correct size siding on Saturday morning and a full day’s work of installing by the siding crew, I found myself looking at the forecast for Sunday which was cold and windy. Not ideal for painting. Since the plan was to leave for Denver on Monday morning, I’d resolved to hire a painter to complete the job after I’d left. Problem solved, although it cost more than I had originally planned. Except .. it is now November 4th and I have yet to hear from this painter as to when he’s planning on getting the job done. So now, I’m obsessively checking the weather for this upcoming weekend as I’m traveling back there for a couple work appointments and to complete some interior paint touch-ups on the house. My new goal: FINISH THE PAINT BEFORE IT FREEZES !
