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Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Sneak peek

Here is a quick peek at what we chose for the exterior paint colours. The painting is going well. I will post many photos once it is complete.

Grey, white & red for house exterior.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

More garage demolition

This deserves its own post because the Mr. was so excited to be able to use the jackhammer to finish the garage demolition. There was a concrete curb that acted as a pseudo-foundation for the old garage. Using the jackhammer to break it up and then some elbow grease to haul it away, we got rid of the last of the garage.
So happy!
I was also very happy when a fellow we found on Kijiji came and hauled away all the scrap metal from the garage. It was satisfying to have everything cleared away from the site and be ready to move on to building.
Burning some of the final debris and relaxing after a long week of demolition.

Exterior paint colours

One of the projects that we know we want to complete in the first year of home ownership is to repaint the exterior of the house. The previous owners didn't paint the outside during their tenure, so we are not sure how long it has been since the house was painted. There is a lot of peeling paint on the sides of the house and the white with cream trim colour scheme is not very welcoming.

The current exterior paint is in rough shape and very bland.
So, we need to decide what colour of house we want. This is a HUGE decision. We have spent many hours walking around the neighbourhood and trolling the internet looking at various houses and their colour schemes. We know we want to use multiple colours to highlight some of the architectural features, but we still want it to look modern.
Using Pinterest to keep track of ideas
After much discussion, we decided on two tones of gray for the main body of the house, white trim, and a bold accent colour for the windows and doors. Sounds simple, right. Nope! There are a million shades of gray: purple gray, blue gray, silver gray, green gray, beige gray (also referred to as greige), brown gray....you get the idea. The same goes for white. We tested some colours out on the house and finally made a decision, which we will reveal in an upcoming post.
Purple or red for the accent colour?
Testing shades of gray on the garage before we tore it down.

Monday, September 2, 2013

Old garage demolition

I'm a little behind on the posts, but it has been a busy summer. We have started the building of a new garage. One that we can park both cars in and have room for storage. Yay!

In order to do this, we first had to get rid of the old garage. You might be thinking "How bad could the old garage be?" Well, it was not very functional. Only one door opened, as the other was blocked by support beams holding up the main part of the garage. Also, the floor was just wooden boards placed right on the dirt and the entire structure leaned a little to the left. It was time for it to go.
The old garage - only the larger door opened

The inside of the lean-to section. Braces supporting the main garage
prevent this side from being useful for anything but storage.

Almost done! A final push (literally) and clean-up is all that is needed.

The Mr. (with some help from me and his parents) did a great job of getting the interior stripped. My Dad made the trip to Edmonton to help with the rest of the demolition and start on the new construction. With a some elbow grease and a final push we got the garage down. It took a few days to dispose of all the waste and shovel up all the sawdust insulation that was in the walls, but we did it. Now onto the site preparation for the new and improved garage!