Sunday, July 10, 2011

buh bye pink

it's been almost two years since we bought our little pink house. last summer, we managed to paint most of it. and, we're proud to say that within the past couple weeks, we were able to wave buh bye to the last of it. well, the most noticeable last of it, at least. there are some remnant bits of pink on the back of the house (the rickety staircase, mostly). that aside, we are nearly pink-free.

the last bit of pink on the front of the house, before:


and here's what it looks like now:


in an effort to stay true to the victorianesque era of our home, we decided to go with fish scale cedar shingles to give it a gingerbready look. we're quite happy with the results. how we got there is another story.

take one. we rented scaffolding from home depot, got it set up after a few tries, then proceeded to rip out the old shingles. we found that they were nailed directly to boards - no backing of any kind. so, once we got them all down, we could see right into the attic.




we thought it would be a good idea to put up some plywood, then lay down the felt, and put the shingles in. we also thought it would be a good idea to put asphalt roofing shingles on the portion that slopes away from the house.


we got pretty far along with things. my dad pitched in a full days work. and then, we took a step back and decided we weren't totally feeling it. the asphalt shingles didn't match the existing roof shingles, and, while functional, they were aesthetically throwing everything off.


fast forward one week, multiply our scaffolding rental bill by two, and we begin again. this time, we decided to just put felt up (no plywood, so as to allow the house to breathe a bit), and to use the cedar shingles for everything. of course, before we could get started, we had to track down more shingles (and stain them). luckily, and i mean luckily, dunn lumber had two boxes. their last two boxes. and they were on deep discount. so excellent.


so, we got 'em up, got the scaffolding down, and can now enjoy the view. the pretty cedar shingle, pink-free view. ah.