Home improvements

The red triangle indicates where we will be putting in cedar shingle siding to add 'visual interest' to the front of our house. The rest of it will be 5.5 inch horizontal siding.

Yesterday we had our first meeting with the project manager who will be coordinating our siding replacement job. H was in training, so I left work early to meet the guy and get some questions answered. He did a walk through with our sales guy, and then they came and got me and we discussed the project.

Before I get into what they said, let me back up a bit. When we were buying this house, our home inspector discovered some dry rot on the front porch post. It was pretty obvious (we noticed it too) but we weren't sure how bad it was. As part of our agreement to buy the house, we asked that the post be replaced. They did the work, we saw that it was done, and we went ahead with the purchase.

Fast forward to yesterday and the first thing that the guys pointed out to me was that one side of the roof on the front of our house was lower than the other side. (the left side of the red triangle in the photo above) This affects how the siding will work...and more importantly, how the water will flow. I noticed a ton of water running over that edge (and not down the drain spout) when it rained hard a few weeks ago, but we figured that was due to a blocked gutter which we promptly cleared out. That whole side of the front porch roof needs to be raised up. When they replaced the post, they didn't 1) fix the main problem, or 2) at least level the roof like they should have. These guys are going to fix it for us, but I pray that it doesn't put us in the poor house. We are now expecting to pay 2 - 3K more than we had originally budgeted for this project. Luckily, we feel that these guys are good and that they'll do a thorough job. The other company we had do the bid for the siding replacement was the same company who did the post replacement work for the previous owners. We are VERY glad that we didn't opt to go with them for the siding!

As we have been doing improvements on this house, we are finding a lot of things that were done in a somewhat 'rigged' manner. My guess is that the previous homeowner fancied himself somewhat of a handiman, and did a lot of his own work. Unfortunately, a lot of it was done half-assed or incorrectly. We are now slowly correcting all the mistakes. So far, nothing has been major (prior to this)...but we both are fearful of what they'll find when they pull off the siding. My hope is that the original builders of the house did it right...and only the things that have been done since then are subject to this guy's apparent lack of knowledge. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

We expect a call sometime today to verify that they will be starting work next Monday. The project will probably also take a few extra days to complete now...but the sooner the better as we will still have to paint everything after they are done.