Comet Circle Renovation: We passed our "wrap" inspection yesterday!

Siding is about to start. Our big goal for the past 3 months (we actually closed on Comet 3 months ago today) has been to re-side the house. That process started today. But let me back up a bit first.

The "big, scary windows" weren't that bad after all. The windows I am referring to are actually one window and one french door - both in our master bedroom. Thanks to our neighbor, Steve Kane, the window has been sitting in the bedroom waiting to be installed for quite some time now. The door was a different story. It was in the garage waiting to get hauled up the stairs. I thought it would take 3 or 4 guys to get the job done. I wanted no part of it. But Mark and Tim had other ideas. They thought we could do it. And with a little creativity we did. First was using the "scooters" to get it from the garage to the bottom of the stairs. Then we put a board on top of the first set of stairs, then fashioned a rope with two handles and put it under the door. We laid the door on it's side on the board. Tim and Mark used the rope to lift the door up and I pushed from the bottom. We got the door onto the landing, turned it upright then Tim and Mark carried it up the rest of the way. It really wasn't that bad with this clever solution.

The installation was a bit nerve-wracking. We had to put ladders up on the "half built"deck. We were living on the wild side with the placement at the very edge in order to be able to reach the proper spot on the left side of the window. I opted to stay off the ladder - I left that job to Mark and Tim. Tim's left-handedness "won" him the prized position on the deck side. No worries -- all was well.

Using ladder jacks to hang a plank for window installation

Installing the Master Bedroom Window

A new door has been installed to the right of this window

New French Door in Master Bedroom

One of the last windows that we installed was on the Front Side of the house in the living room. Unfortunately the day we picked to do it was a day that the weather didn't cooperate. It was raining all day long. But we didn't let that slow us down. We now have a view of the dumpster through our new window. Here's what it looked like in the middle of the process.

View out our front living room window "hole"

It now has a new window in it

Here's what it looks like now:

The last window we put in was the one on the right on the bottom

We spent the first couple of days this week enjoying the spectacular fall weather while completing the vapor barrier wrap (tyvek) around the house. We finished at 10pm on Tuesday night (after going to dinner at Chuck E. Cheese's for our nephew's 8th birthday), just in time for the Wednesday 9am wrap inspection. We had to make one little correction but the rest was perfect so we got a sign off from the City Building Inspector. That was the go-ahead we needed in order to start siding the house!

Wednesday was a day of re-grouping, getting supplies and working up our plan of attack so we could go at it first thing this morning (Thursday).

I was so busy being Marks' "trim installing side kick"that I didn't remember to get my camera out to take pictures. After trimming 7 windows, we sat out on our make-shift deck with our neighbors, Bob and Laurie and enjoyed a glass of wine. It was such a lovely night we couldn't pass it up. Next thing we knew Laurie was heating up left over pasta for us -- our first dinner at Comet! It was amazing. I have to get the recipe - 5 ingredients in a crock pot -- the perfect kind of cooking for us now.

We also enjoyed lunch "in" this week. We are really getting tired of the fast food located at the intersection of 7 and 101 so we have moved a microwave into the kitchen and are making soup for lunch.