Rounding the Corner on Beadboard Work

It was a big week in Chicago this week. The Cubs won the World Series, deyed the river blue, and had a big parade. I work on Michigan so it made for a fun work day. 

I also felt that it was a good week for work on the house. The weather was great, I got the garage cleaned up and it can now be used for parking cars instead of staining wood, and I did a lot of work on the beadboard. 

I was able to finish all but two small sections of beadboard this week. It looks great and will be nice to finally get to the scraping and painting. I don't hold out a ton of hope that I will get much done before it is too cold but I am crossing my fingers.  

The trim for where the beadboard meets the friexeboard also arrived this week. I started priming that and will paint it this week so it can go up soon as well.

Soffit and Fascia Demolition and Reconstruction

A view of the exposed soffit, after demolition.

The next phase of the project is well under way. Over the past couple weeks, demolition was completed on the soffit. When we took down the old beadboard, we found significant rot on the beadboard as well as the fascia and soffit supports. The soffit was also previously supported by 1x4 material and was sagging. The house looked a bit like Droopy.

We always wanted the soffit to be varnished beadboard so that the wood character was visible but if the soffit wood were in good condition, we were willing to save it and paint it. Unfortunately, there just wasn't enough to save to make it worth it so we are sticking with the plan of replacing the soffit board with new that matches the old exactly.

Rotted beadboard, ready for the dump.

Rotting soffit with squirrel nest above.

One "discovery" during demolition of the soffit was that the eaves had been filled, by squirrels, with a mixture of insulation and mulch to create huge squirrel nests. The mess and smell were nauseating. I am glad that the squirrels never made it into my attic and I am glad that we removed this problem from the house.  

Reconstructing the eaves.

A detailed view of the front gable and eaves during construction of the new supports and fascia.. 

The soffits were reinforced with new 2x4s and were leveled as much as possible. The fascia boards were also rotted so those needed to be replaced on most of the house as well. These too were replaced with boards that matched the size of the existing ones.  

The straightened out eaves on the front of the home.

The Droopy look is now gone and it makes a huge difference to the appearance of the house. I am happy with the work so far but can't help but still have that anxious feeling about the project. The weekend weather does not look like it is going to cooperate so I am not sure how much we will accomplish this weekend.   

Meanwhile, my basement and garage have become a staining and finishing area for the new beadboard. We are using a light "cedar" color for the stain and I am using the same brand of stain and varnish that I used on the interior of the home. I have about 2/3 of this work done now but am not sure when we will put it up.
 

The projects are stacking up - literally

I have a pile of wood in the front porch that will someday become Adirondack chairs. I have a pile of supplies: drip edge, limber, nails, paint,etc. that will someday become my repaired garage soffit and eaves. Now I have another pile of stuff that is a future project.This morning, my storm windows arrived from Spencerworks (yes, that's the crated windows in front of the house). They look great and luckily I had tickets to the Sox game today or I would have spent a day installing them. Instead, I was a slacker and decided to relax a bit - work my way up to the installation, so to speak. I have an actual deadline for the soffit work: I need them done by the next time the local inspectors come around to make sure we are keeping up appearances with the rest of the OP. This is Sept. 1st. I don't have a deadline for the chairs but it would be nice to get them done before the end of summer. As for the windows. I would love to get those installed ASAP as well. I guess I have a busy weekend ahead.

I'll follow up with a lot of info about the windows in a future blog, maybe after the installation, because it was a pretty involved decision making process that got us to this point. I thought I'd have time to write about it before they came but the folks at Spencerworks were too fast. Lets hope I have no distractions and have a lot to write about next week.

The basement is officially finished

After several months of procrastinating about how I will finish the soffit on the basement ceiling, I finally finished work on it this weekend and can say that I am officially finshed with the basement, for now.

I still have work to do on the basement bathroom, the stairs to the basement, and after we send Sophie off to college, in about 15 years, I'll put in the bar. Other than that, I am done. I am happy with the overall job - there are a couple of thigns I would have done differently but at least I can walk into this room and not feel like I need to do something.Now that I see the old photos of the basement, I can honestly say that it is a pretty big transformation.