Concrete Repouring

Despite the cold snowy weather that we're currently experiencing, I'm going to get back to this blog by posting more exterior work. For this task, I hired a contractor once again, as pouring this much concrete really wasn't something I was comfortable with.

 When I moved in, the concrete sidewalks around the house were wrecked. Thirty some-odd years of weather, plus roof drippings really did a number on them. They were badly pitted, discolored, cracked, had much surface wear, and sloped towards the house in many places. Also, there was the 3' x 8' section by the laundry room door that had sunk about eight inches, and been poured over twice

Deck Replacement (Part 2)

This post leaves off where <<Part 1>> ended.

First up, I marked the locations of all the joists that would be run out from the house. These were placed no more than 16" on center, and occasionally less where obstacles got in the way. There were several utilities on the side of the house that I had to work around. Once all of the spots were marked, I attached the header brackets, and started putting up the joists.

Deck Replacement (Part 1)

As you can see in the pics, the main deck on the house was in dire need of attention

Occasional Interruption #1 (Tree Fell Down)

Occasionally things get in the way of the progress. Here's one that held me up for a few days.

During a crazy storm, a rather large tree came down. It took out a second tree when it came down.

Shed Removal, Garden Addition

When I bought this property, there were five outbuildings on it. One was a garage with a dirt floor, and one was a garden shed on a concrete pad; these I will discuss in future posts.

This post is about the other three. There was shed that was about 14'x8', with a 6' high roof. There was a second shed that was slightly smaller in width and depth, and that was less than 4' high. The last one was a dog house, in a dog run enclosure. The first two had dirt floors.

These buildings were a real eye sore in the back corner of the lot.

Cleaning the Porch

At some point in history, someone thought it would be a good idea to use construction adhesive to glue exterior grade carpet to the concrete floor of the front porch.

I can't imagine that this ever looked better than the concrete would have on its own. The blue, gray, and black carpet definitely looked out of place after I had the house resided.

Painting the Exterior Brick

This update will depict how I made the very dated brick on the front of the house look modern. The only real option here was to paint it.

Step one was to determine which color I wanted to go with. I had done this back when I had gutters put on the house. I looked through the sample colors available for the gutters (which I got from the gutter contractor), and picked what looked the most appealing at the time.

Block Retaining Walls

I started with a real mess. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the original wall had separated from the house. It was cracked up, and had sagged.

The concrete that ran up to the wall had sunk several times in its history. At some point someone had repoured concrete over the original stuff, in an effort to raise it back up.

Jacking Up the Porch (& Gutter Talk)

The front porch overhang was historically supported by three 2x6 boards, stood vertically. The boards were a bit bowed, and clearly weren't intended for this type of application. That is what caused the roof overhang to sag. I set out with the goal of replacing those 2x6s with three 4x4s, secured in place with metal brackets.

 I had Maximum Flow Seamless Gutters (http://www.maxgutters.com/) come out to put gutters on the place shortly after the first contractor was done with the exterior. This house never had proper gutters, and it caused pitting damage to the sidewalks around the lower ground level. It also caused water to gather around the house in a few places.

Pool Removal

This wasn't an overly hard job, but there were some things about it that were unexpected. The first thing I did was go around the pool with a pick-ax, jabbing holes into the lower part of it. As you can see here, it was leaking like a sieve around the bottom. It drained that way for almost two days.

After that I went around the whole thing with my cordless drill, unscrewing the multitude of screws that held it together. That left me with several posts, the post caps, the top lip/edge that went around the whole pool, the 4' tall outside ring, and the inside rubber liner. All but the last of those were metal.

The Contractor Goes To Work

The worst thing about this job was that it had to be done in late December, early January. The guys from AGW Contracting didn't seem to mind though, as they jumped right in.

I did the roof tear off and clean up myself, with a few friends. It took us two days to strip it down. It took me another few days to get the yard cleaned up decently, but it had to be cleaned again once the snow finally melted in Spring. It only took two days for the new roof to be put on.

Move In Day

 Move in day was November 13, 2009. There were some issues that I wanted to address immediately.

The brick wall around the lower level was literally falling off the house. There was a gap between the brick and the house that was several inches wide in some spots. I couldn't have water and snow getting behind there. There had been a few half-hearted attempts to repair this over the years, with black caulk; by the time I took over, it was a real mess.

Introductions: The House

This post will give you some basic info on the house. I'll use the pictures and info that was available via the realtor and realtor.com for this post, so you can see what I saw going into it.

It's located in the Town of Hull, WI, and has a Stevens Point mailing address. That's pretty much in the dead center of the State.

Introductions: Me

This first post is intended as an introduction of me. That way you'll get an idea of what my background is, what my skill sets are, and how I ended up in this remodeling project.