A House of a Different Color

Paint samples on the house.

Now that I've completed scraping and priming the outside of the existing house, it's time to pick a paint color.

Zita and I had a general idea of the color that we wanted to paint the house. We had seen some other houses around town that we liked that were painted grey. Zita also had the idea of trimming the house in black.

Of course, when you get to the paint store (Sherwin Williams), there are about a thousand different colors of grey and black. Picking colors is not really my strong suit. Fortunately, Zita is quite good at that kind of thing. She fairly quickly narrowed it down to just a couple of different shades of grey and a single shade of black that she liked. However, looking at paint samples in the store and looking at them on the house itself are two different things.

Sherwin Williams sells "samples" of paint (just under a quart) for a small price that you can have mixed to your color choices. Then you can take the samples and paint them onto several different places on the house so you can see what they look like. It's surprising how different the colors can look on different sides of the house and in different light.

Once we had the paint on the house in several places, including on the brick, it helped us decide pretty quickly that the darker shade of grey looked the best.

Now, if the weather stays decent over the next few weeks (or months), all I have to do is paint it all over again, this time with top coat instead of primer.

Soon, we'll have a house of a different color.

Front porch freshly painted with new house numbers just installed (and silicon still drying).

It Pays to Shop Around

Chippers Tree Service taking out the hollow, rotting hackberry tree.

After the sticker shock I got for removing the trees, I decided to call a couple of other tree service companies.

I looked up tree services on Yelp for Denton and checked out their ratings. Fortunately, I found a couple of tree service companies that had high ratings and did work in Denton.

The first company was called Monster Tree Service out of Flower Mound.

They gave me a good price for removing the two trees that had to go (the pecan that was touching the house and the hackberry that was in the way of the new addition). He quoted me a price of $1,500 plus tax to take out the two trees and grind the stumps, plus he threw in removing all the brush piles I had accumulated from the trimming I had already done.

Unfortunately, they would not take out the rotting hackberry tree that also needed to go because he said their insurance company wouldn't let them work on rotting trees. Since his price we so good and they could get the two trees out before the deadline that our homeowner's insurance required, I told him to go ahead.

They did a great job and had the trees removed and the brush piles cleaned up within a couple of days from their initial visit to give me a bid.

All that I had left to worry about "tree-wise" was the hollow, rotting hackberry tree that really needed to come down too.

I went back to Yelp and looked through the tree service companies again. I found a comment on one company where a customer had mentioned that the company had removed a rotting tree for them. I called that company (Chippers Tree Service out of Irving) and they sent out their rep to give me a bid. Luckily, they handle rotting trees.

Also, on walking the property with their rep (Varo) we noticed that there were a couple of large branches hanging over our house from the other side of the lot and one other large hackberry tree on that side that was going to cause us problems when we put up our fence since it was way out of alignment with the other trees on that side. His bid to remove the rotten tree, the other large tree that was in the way of the fence, grind the stumps and remove the two large branches that were threatening our house from the other side of the lot was $1,900 plus tax.

I said "do it".

So in the end, after getting an initial bid of $7,000 plus tax to take the two trees that were in the way of the new edition and the rotting hackberry tree, I ended up getting all three of those trees removed, plus another hackberry tree in the way of the future fence, plus two large branches over the house, plus four stump grindings, plus all brush piles removed, for $3,400 plus tax (less than half the initial bid).

In addition, both the companies that I ended up using were licensed and insured (as was the first company) and very professional. Both crews worked efficiently and safely and were very friendly and customer service oriented.

Sometimes, it really does pay to shop around.

Tree Trouble

Trees on East Side of Our Backyard

We love the trees on our lot in Denton. There are lots of trees throughout the neighborhood. It's like living in an urban forest.

Unfortunately, we have one tree (a pretty Pecan) that is literally touching the house. That Pecan tree and a Hackberry tree (the two trees in the background of the picture near the house) are both right where we want to add our master bedroom and bathroom.

Even if we weren't planning to build an addition, our homeowners insurance company has informed us that we must remove the Pecan tree that is touching the house, or they will cancel our policy.

So, I called a couple of tree service companies and scheduled them to come give us an estimate for removing the trees.

When the first company showed up (a local Denton company), she informed me that we should probably also remove a third Hackberry tree (shown in the foreground of the picture) since it was already hollow in the middle and beginning to rot. It will be easier to take it out now, rather than wait until after we add the addition. Then, the space will be tighter and there will be a risk that the tree might come down in a storm and hit the new addition.

Luckily, they have enough room on the west side of our house to get their equipment in the backyard to take out the trees.

Not so luckily, the cost to remove all three trees is quite high ($7,000 plus tax). Yikes!

I have a different tree service coming on Monday to get another estimate, but it looks like removing these trees is going to be expensive.

Ouch.

Improvising

Cutting a Soffit Grove in the Fascia Board

What do you do when you need to replace a section of 1x4 fascia board and neither Lowes or Home Depot carry the pre-grooved fascia board nor the dado blade needed to cut the groove (into which the soffit board fits)?

You channel your Norm Abram from This Old House and recall that you can use a metal yard stick as a guide and make multiple passes with your skill saw to cut the required groove. Set the skill saw to the necessary depth and then slowly move the guide about a blades width for each pass.

Kind of a pain, and takes some time ...but it gets the job done.

Phase 1 Plan

Layout for the New Addition (Master Bedroom and Bathroom)

We met with our designer (Renee) on the layout for the first phase of our remodel. The first phase will be the new addition off the back of the house.

Renee had prepared two different options for us. One option had the bedroom area of the addition at the back of the addition, and the second option had the master bedroom at the first part of the addition (just beyond the existing wall).

After reviewing the two options, we decided that we liked having the master bedroom part as the first thing that you enter from the existing house, and the bathroom part at the back of the addition. We made a couple of other small changes as we discussed the layout with Renee (like making the new porch longer and at the same height as the existing porch).

Now that we have a plan for the first phase, the next step will be to get some cost estimates from the contractors. At the moment, we have two contractors from which we want to get some cost estimates. Based on what we get from them, we may decide to get one more, or go ahead and select a contractor and get the ball rolling.

A Chipper Off The 'Ol Block

SunJoe Chipper

One of the cleanup tasks on our fixer upper has been trimming the many trees and bushes on our lot. The foliage has not been trimmed in some time. All of this trimming has resulted in several stacks of cut branches and brush.

You can bag up the trimmings and drag the larger branches to the front and let the city haul it away for you. However, Denton does assess a charge for "excess" yard trimmings that are put out for pickup. Also, you are giving up all that potential compost and mulch.

Since most of the branches are pretty small in diameter (albeit, there are a lot of them), I decided to purchase an electric wood chipper to grind them up to use as mulch and compost. I purchasing a 14 amp SunJoe electric chipper from Amazon.  The chipper arrived last Monday (several days later than Amazon's initial "guaranteed deliver date", but that's another story). I picked up the chipper from our house in Carrollton, assembled it, and started in on the brush piles.

So far so good.

I've made it through several of the piles (although there are several more to go) and it seems to be making nice piles of mulch. The mulch should come in handy when I finally get to work on building and planting our flowerbeds and landscaping.

All Paths Lead Home

Flagstone Walkway

While we've been waiting for our designer (Renee) to complete the drawings for our new master bedroom and bathroom, I've been trimming bushes and trees, scraping and priming peeling paint, and digging out the excess dirt in the front flower bed and moving it to the low spots in the back yard.

However, I did take a bit of break and went and bought some flagstone to build a walkway on the west side of the house. It is mostly just dirt on that side and it really needed something to get from the front of the house to the back.

When I complete the scraping and priming on the eve above this path, I'll add a flower bed between the path and the wall with some Columbine and other shade loving plants, since this side of the house is in shade much of the day.