Our Latest "Little" House Project

This post is long overdue, but I was waiting until Erik finished our front steps. Well the snow few before he could finish the railing, so I am going to go ahead and do it now. I'll have to post a picture of the finished railing this spring! This fall we embarked on the "little" project of putting new siding on our house. We knew that it would need to be done at some point as the paint was peeling off of the siding and it didn't look very nice; however, the city of Cedar Falls helped "encourage" us to do it sooner than we had planned. :) You see, since we live in the College Hill Neighborhood District, there are codes that have been put in place to prevent slum lords from letting their rental properties deteriorate. Well, because we live in this area, even though we are not a rental property, the rules still apply to us. We had to either paint or re-side our house or we would be fined by the city. Well after some conversations with some people, in particular my Uncle Nick (who is a retired industrial tech teacher) we decided that because the siding is probably the original from when the house was built and would need to be re-painted every couple of years, to completely re-do the siding. Since cost was an issue for us, we decided to go ahead and do it ourselves, with the help of our families and my wonderful Uncle Nick. We had insulation blown into the walls the Friday before we tore off all of the siding, and let me tell you, I can definitely tell we did that with this -10 degree weather!! Our house is so much warmer this winter! It took us a little over two weeks to tear the siding off, put fanfold up, tape it, and put the siding on. It is not as hard as you would think it would be and Erik really enjoyed doing the siding work himself. We were so blessed to have my Uncle Nick help us out!! He was here every day-unless it was raining-for those two weeks!! We were also very thankful for my Uncle Roger who drove his old pickup truck down here the day we tore off all of the siding. He then let us load it all up in his truck and he took it back to the farm to his burn pile for us, wow, it was great to get rid of it all so easily!!! Here are some pictures from the project! Thanks SO MUCH again to our families and my awesome Uncle Nick and Uncle Roger!

The house before...

Erik ripping off siding from the south side of our house.

My dad and Erik ripping off more siding.

Erik's mom and dad (Craig and Deb) helping tear off siding.

My brother, Ben, and my mom, Nadene, working on the north side.

Uncle Nick and Uncle Roger working on the top dormer.

Putting siding on the north side! This is the first side we did!

Uncle Nick and Erik finishing up the back dormer, wow that was high up! :)

The back all done!!

Working on the front.

Erik, my dad, and Uncle Nick working on the front.

Erik working on our front landing/stairs! He did this all by himself! Way to go!!

All done!!! (Almost....we have to finish the railing down the stairs!)