Progress On The House Part 3

Hello Friends!  Are you having a good week?  For those of you affected by this heat wave, I feel your pain.  We have those here in the south, but at the moment things are not too bad in our part of North Carolina.  I hope you have some cooler temperatures headed your way soon!     I wish I had some prettier pictures of the house at the moment, but I don't.  It's still in the in-between, ugly stages.  The house itself doesn't look so ugly, but everything around it looks rough until we can get some landscaping done.  We won't be doing much landscaping until the rest of the big trees are felled, cut up, and hauled off.  Our tree guy won't be able to get back to us until week after next (most likely).  The rest of the work has to be done with the assistance of a crane operator.  Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but I would never buy another home with so many enormous trees so close to the house.     

         First things first, we got our new roof installed.  We love it!  I will take some better pictures once I have the front porch cleaned up and put back together.    

   The roof over the carport.  Our guttering was installed around the time we got our new windows in 2016, so only five years old.  The gutters all look very good except these over the carport and the section in the previous picture.  Once again, these dents were caused by those darn poplar trees; they kept our roof and gutters dirty, and the occasional limb would fall and that's what made the dents.  We're hoping we can get the dents repaired and clean this part of the gutters.  The rest of the gutters were cleaned by the remodeling crew.   

   The back of the roof is seen here.  I didn't take pictures of the other end of the house; I guess I was just in a hurry and forgot.  It's been crazy town around here for the last three weeks, folks.  😏  I have to tell you, we were so pleased with the roofing company we used.  They were recommended to us by my in-laws.  We got three different quotes before we made our selection; this company gave us an excellent price and, as best we can tell, did great work.  The guys who installed the roof were the hardest workers I've ever seen.  They worked about 12 hours the first day and about 9 hours the second day.  They did everything in two days, which included tearing the old roof off down to the plywood, installing the new roof, new vent covers for the stove fan and attic fan, flashing around the chimney, and cleanup afterwards.  It was dreadfully hot here Monday, but that didn't slow them down.  They all three wore big straw hats to protect their faces, and we had Hispanic music this week instead of country music, but it was all fine with us.  😄    

Here's a small portion of the roof over the porch.  I wanted you to see the outside of the front door.  You can see what I mean about cleanup, right?  I hope to get my pots replanted very soon.      

Sorry for the quality of this picture; it was hard to photograph because of the light.  I know this is not such a pretty porch at the moment, but believe it or not, it looks better than it did previously.  This screened porch was an add-on by the original owners, who had the house built in 1971.  We think it was an existing patio, and they just turned it into a screened-porch.  It wasn't a very professional job, and to be honest, we've never used the porch.  We tried to improve it a few times, but frankly, I was in favor of tearing off the whole thing and turning it into a patio again.  Ideally, I'd love to have a sunroom here; I still miss the sunroom from our house in Greensboro.  However, a sunroom is not in our budget at the moment, so we settled for having this painted, re-screened and any wood problems repaired or replaced.  Hal and Will pulled the carpet up last summer, and we're glad to have that stuff gone (ugly indoor/outdoor green carpet from the 70's).  I have plans for how to hide the breaker box and old power meter on the wall to the right.     We already have furniture for this space; Hal's mom gave us their old porch furniture many years ago, and it has been out here all these years.  This porch leaked when it rained, and the furniture has some rust, but not a lot.  It's dark green wrought iron, and it's nice furniture.  I'm shopping for new chair cushions, a tablecloth, and some outdoor rugs for the floor.    

   This was the old, original light fixture -- it just screams 1970's.  That was a vintage, metal Land 0'Lakes thermometer on the left of the light, and it's now covered with rust thanks to the rain and storms over the years.     

We had this back door painted black, just like the door into the kitchen.  I love, love this color, Sherwin Williams Tricorn Black.     

New ceiling and fresh coats of paint.  The black cord running along the top is our Time Warner cable (not very attractive I know).     

We're planning to hang a string, or two, of Edison lights around the wooden strip at the top of the screen all the way around the inside of the porch.  I love those and I think they'll really perk this area up.     

 Here's the old light fixture turned on; I'll give it this, it sure has held up a long time.     

Here's our new back porch light.  Hal picked it out at the lighting store when we ordered the new fixtures for the front porch.  He installed it last weekend, and we love it.  It has a fun, industrial vibe, and I think we're really going to enjoy it.   

  Here it is turned on, a nice warm light without being too bright.   

That little chunk of wood is glued to the brick wall, so we'll have to get that off.   

Moving outside now, we got a new bird bath for our feathered friends a few weeks ago.  It's pottery, and I love the color of the glaze.  It reminds me of the sky and water.  The round black disc is a solar- powered fountain to help keep the water clean and free of algae.  We're going to add some more stones to the bowl.  The light in this picture is odd because I took these pics after 8:00 p.m., so it was close to twilight.   

These last two pics were taken in the middle of the day.  Here you can see the fountain bubbling.  It has three different attachments, and we tried the one that shoots up in four streams.  The problem with that is when the wind blows, it blows all the water out onto the ground instead of back into the bird bath, so it ran out of water.  😉   

Have you ever tried a solar fountain at your home?  I can tell you that this one absolutely works.  Hal got it from Amazon and I'll provide a link here in a future post.  If you're still here, thanks for hanging in there with this long post.  I just wanted to share the latest updates to the house re-model.     It's just the two of us and Duncan here today, and we're enjoying the peace and quiet.  In case I don't get back here before then, I'd like to wish you all a happy and safe Fourth of July.  It looks like people are excited to be gathering with family and friends again.  Thanks for visiting House at Forest Manor and have a great day!    Cheers,           NOTE:  Apologies to my reader, Polly, who left a comment earlier on this post.  For some reason it published twice, and when I tried to delete one of the published comments (both exactly the same) they both got deleted.  Sigh.  This new Blogger is just different enough from the old Blogger that little changes still trip me up.