Rick arrived on Friday morning, and I worked half a day and arrived Friday afternoon. He repaired the old bathroom window hole in the siding in the front, trimmed out the front door, and worked on removing the siding on the back and prepping for painting.
On Saturday, we had to remove all of the lights/Ring doorbell/hand rails, etc., to prepare for painting, trim out the rest of the back door, put up the remaining sheets of siding around the cellar and back door areas, finish caulking around the entire house (remaining windows, doors, holes in siding, etc.) and get windows and other areas taped. I also clipped back the badly overgrown honeysuckle bush and cleaned up the area north of the cellar to allow access to the siding and to make the area usable again. Becky was around for a while and helped dig up irises that had strayed outside the appropriate areas in the yard and we, of course, hoed more weeds. Rick and I finally got everything put together, taped, and ready to paint very late in the afternoon and were able to get 2 coats on the back and one coat on the northwest side before it got dark. There were lots of storms in the area, and Sunday looked very questionable for finishing the painting.
Sunday morning was stormy with storms lined up into the panhandle. The heavier rain was long gone, but it was threatening until just before noon. Rick re-installed the stuff in the backyard (Ring doorbell base, motion detector light) and installed the outdoor electrical outlet for the first time. We got everything set up and taped and were able to resume painting around noon. We got 2 coats on the entire house and got things cleaned up, loaded some leftover siding/trim onto the trailer, and brought some things back to Lubbock. Rick also re-installed the front handrails, front Ring doorbell, etc.
The concrete guy who was supposed to go by and take a look this past week never contacted us. While we were getting things cleaned up, the original concrete guy (who has stood us up twice) texted, and said he was in Benjamin. He stopped by and measured and is supposed to get us a quote tonight or tomorrow. His crew will be doing some work at the school in the next week or two and may be able to get this one done at the some time. It just might work out!
We're happy with the house colors. We wanted to go with something other than brown. The windows and door trims will be white (we didn't have the white paint yet and just used the light gray for simplicity). We'll go with a different color on the doors for a splash of color, but we haven't totally figured that out yet. The current faded brown roof seems to distort the gray colors. The roof will hopefully be replaced in a few weeks, so we'll probably wait until that's done to decide on the final front and back door colors.
Next week, we'll probably paint the trim on the doors and windows, do some odds and ends in the house for mother, and maybe move some outdoor furniture from the old house.
Front door trimmed
