There were no winter rains in December 2018, so we asked our favorite painter to get some much-needed exterior painting done. As mentioned numerous times on this blog, the previous owners partook in a lot of deferred maintenance, and we’ve had to deal with the resulting mess. The POs had the property up for sale almost a full year and it failed to sell then, so they apparently took out a mortgage and used the money to redo the kitchen and bathrooms and splash paint on surfaces before relisting it.
The exterior paint on the house and fences just covered up a bunch of rot. We had the house yard fence sorted that summer and waited for our favorite painter to make time for our house exterior as there was a lot of work to be done. Almost a year earlier, he and his brother did all the green trim on the house in preparation for the gutters being installed, so thankfully there was just a wee bit of touch up to do there. Still, stucco repairs, dry rot issues, splitting siding, vent holes needing patching, and lots of things to be caulked before painting could even start kept Humberto and his brother busy for a couple of weeks. We had all the supplies delivered by Sherwin Williams, the same company that provided the huge amount of paint for the fencing.
They started with the upper windows in the great room. Lots of rot had to be removed and the windows repaired and sealed back up again. To get up there they used laid plywood across the arbor, so they didn’t have to use any scaffolding.
Then there was the southeast exterior wall. This is the back side of the original garage, and in the mid-80s it was made into a finished living space and now serves as Agent Smith’s office. The siding may have been original as it was all redwood boards; the harsh southern sun in the springs/summers and wet winters meant that the lower section was splitting apart and rotting away. The guys removed the old siding and there was indeed quite a bit of rot along the bottom (pics 1-5). Instead of new individual boards, we opted for some prefabbed siding sheets. The POs used something similar on the west wall of the house, so at least it would sort of match, but honestly, the house is such a mishmash with redwood siding in some places, stucco in others and huge panes of glass just about everywhere else, so the change isn’t especially noticeable.
Siding boards were primed and prepped and a new barrier layer was installed (pics 6-8), then new boards put in place and primed as well (pics 9-10). Finally, they were painted to match the rest of the house (last pic).
Below is the wall almost a year earlier, when the eaves and fascia were addressed, and then a shot after all the work. As you can see, it now has more texture, which actually gives the house of bit of character there. As a bonus, I found a nice metal outdoor wall clock on clearance at the local Michael’s. During the non-super windy months (i.e. March-November), it hangs on the wall just next to the now sealed up silly kitchen door.
Another bit of repair work the guys tackled were a number of old vents along the bottom of the house. There were two on the eastern wall of what was the original garage, because it was originally a garage. But when it was converted into living space, these exterior openings were never properly sealed–the POs just popped in pieces of plywood that rattled about in the wind. Humberto reused some of the boards he pulled out from around the corner to make patches for such holes, and they were then sealed, sanded and finally painted. Now you’d never know the vents were ever there, unless you know where to look.
Several similar vent holes were covered up, including the ones for the furnaces we had removed earlier that year. These were never blocked off from either side, as that would have been a bad thing when the old furnaces were still in use. While we still have holes in the interior walls of that closet space, Agent Smith’s office is now less drafty since they’re sealed from the outside.
While all of these repairs were going on, Huberto and his brother (Alonzo! I finally remembered!) were busy painting the trim and exterior of the house. There was lots and lots of prep work involved–so much sealing and tidying prior to painting, we kept them busy for several weeks and they are super fast at what they do. They finished up by mid-December and didn’t reappear until the next project a few months later.
