Thy Neighbor's House

We haven't been doing anything too exciting lately (mostly fall weeding and pruning, which is exciting to me, but pretty much nobody else), so I thought I'd show you the talk of the neighborhood: our neighbor Richard's house, after spending the whole summer getting stripped and repaired and so on, is getting primed today!

Just in time, too, as the weather forecast has rain starting Monday. Cross your fingers that that is wrong and the rain doesn't start for another week or so, because after this much time, they're paying for the scaffolding by the day.

Here he is: Richard with the leaky bay that was the catalyst for this whole effort. The redwood has been stripped down to bare wood, sanded, holes filled with epoxy, then the whole thing sealed with epoxy.

At issue in the leaky bay was years of rot caused by messing around with the way the sill came together with the house. At one point, somebody had trimmed down the sill and even repaired a leak with a piece of concrete (which did what concrete does well and held water against the wood until it rotted away).

The sills had to be completely rebuilt. Yikes. I know we have worse damage on our house, but I've sort of gotten used to our issues.

There are still some spots being repaired -- this is the side of the lowest window in the bay, and you can see that there are still some pieces of wood to be replaced.

But they are almost done! The house is going to look amazing when it is finally done.

posted by ayse on 10/01/11