Month: May 2022

And so it begins (…continued)

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So the driveway has gone in, I’m really happy with the way it turned out. We’ve had a bunch of comments from people walking past the house already complementing us on it so in turn have to compliment (and recommend) Marcus and his team at Steele Contracting for the really great job they did. Picture below of its current state, we’re going to have a landscaper in shortly to fix the landscaping around the driveway so we’ll post the final pictures of that that when it’s done. For now here is where we are in the process:

And with that the major renovations begin, I’ll probably ended up tracking it by project as they go along. The contractor that is doing the bulk of the work started today and decided to begin the process by rebuilding two decks, one on either side of the home. First one up is this disaster:

The deck is going in over the next day or two, we have the stone masons coming in this weekend and they’ll be repairing the brickwork along that back wall (along with all the brick work that needs it on the whole home). That area is off the new kitchen that has a nice view of the small fruit orchard we have in the back so it will be a nice place to sit and have a meal once it’s done 🙂 That’s it for now… Wish us luck!

Driveway Before Picture And An Update

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So the air conditioning has been installed, and the carriage house has been sided. The air conditioning is playing out like we hoped it would not, that being because it’s a house built long before central air conditioning and the existing heating only went to one room upstairs (two more room vents were added after the fact). The bottom floor is great, top floor, not so much. Of course in addition to that, the upstairs windows are either screwed, painted, or puttied shut. So we are going to have to try to figure that out, without destroying the windows.

Carriage house went much better, the company we used (Quality Exteriors) did a really great job battling squirrels and sealing those structures off from aforementioned squatters. They took their time in installing and more importantly doing it properly, honestly made me really happy to see installers that cared about making sure the little details were done correctly instead of rushing/half-assing things. It definitely wasn’t easy for them with the weird corners.  I still have to clean, stain and seal the doors, once I get that done I’ll post some before and after shots.

Today begins the driveway install, thought I would throw up the driveway before picture now, and the after picture in about a weeks time once it’s done. We ended up choosing and exposed aggregate concrete driveway, it’s more expensive but at the same time, I think it will suit the house more than stamped concrete or asphalt. Pavers would have been nice, but with the size of the driveway(s) the cost was prohibitive. Looking forward to what our contractors for this project Steele Contracting can do! So with that, here’s the before shot, until next time.