Windows and Siding
It's raining most of this week so I am glad that the foundation work was done last week. The big projects this week is ordering eight windows for the house and priming all 66 pieces of wood sidings that are going be put on the back of the house.
It took us about a week of size revisions and getting price estimates to finally decide on the Milgard Tuscany Series vinyl windows. We got quotes from Home Depot in Emeryville, Sincere Hardware in Oakland and Truitt & White in Berkeley, they all came in at around $2300 excluding tax except for Sincere. Sincere is having a 10% off promotion in addition to the manufacturer's $30 mail in rebate for each window, so we ordered from them. Oh and we paid a little extra for energy saving packages for the windows which qualified them for the federal energy efficiency tax credits for 30% of cost up to $1500. The windows will be ready for pick up in about two weeks. We already bought couple of bedroom windows and exterior doors for the rental units last week from H.D. because we plan on installing them this week. The bedrooms are required by law to have egress windows, they have to be at least 3ft x 5ft in dimension. The bathroom windows have to have tempered glass and the optional obscured effect added because they are going in to the ground floor. For the master bath, I ordered a 4ft. wide horizontal slider window to go above the shower. Justin and I had some disagreement on whether a window is necessary in the master bath, I was very adamant about having one. Maybe I am weird, but a bathroom or room without window just feels claustrophobic to me and I tend to avoid them like the plague.
I am trying not to order things too much ahead of time because we are running out of room in the garage. I am also not sure if the garage is all that safe either. We've had a couple of thefts in the house already so I am careful about putting things away at the end of the day. On Monday morning we discovered that someone had took the copper wire that that was lamped to the rebar before the concrete was poured, put there for grounding. The thief just cut it off and took about 14 foot of copper wire leaving about 6 inches sticking out of the foundation. Ugh! The other theft happened couple of weeks ago. Mr. Tree noticed that the rebar cutter and nail gun air compressor that were stored upstairs were both gone. There were no signs of forced entry, so it could be an inside job, but it definitely taught us a lesson; nothing is safe!
Okay moving on to the wood siding. My order of thirty three 16 foot and same number of 10 foot sidings from Home Depot were delivered on Tuesday, well most of the 10 footers. They delivered the missing pieces the next day except I noticed right away that one of them was the wrong width. The delivery man called the store and the store called later to confirm that they will deliver the right piece to me the next day. Let's hope they get it right this time.
I am into my second day of an epic priming session and I am about half way to the finish line. The reason it's taking so long is because I have to prime both sides of the planks twice. After the first side gets primed once, I have to wait for it to dry and prime it again, when the second coat dries, turn it over and repeat. Another time consuming step is moving each plank onto the sawhorses before painting and removing it onto the floor to dry. The 16 footers take a lot of paint and are also extremely difficult to maneuver in the narrow house. So it's going to take me another 2 maybe 3 days to finish priming all the planks. The discouraging part is that this is only part of the sidings we need. I think going forward, I will get the pre-primed sidings even if they do cost two and a half times more then the non-primed ones. The pre-primed planks are less work and are also better quality, so you do get what you pay for. The good stuff would've cost us over two and a half grand to get enough for the whole back of the house. So we went with the cheapies which was less than $1000 including 5 gallons of primer and painting supplies. I guess that's what they call "sweat equity".
It took us about a week of size revisions and getting price estimates to finally decide on the Milgard Tuscany Series vinyl windows. We got quotes from Home Depot in Emeryville, Sincere Hardware in Oakland and Truitt & White in Berkeley, they all came in at around $2300 excluding tax except for Sincere. Sincere is having a 10% off promotion in addition to the manufacturer's $30 mail in rebate for each window, so we ordered from them. Oh and we paid a little extra for energy saving packages for the windows which qualified them for the federal energy efficiency tax credits for 30% of cost up to $1500. The windows will be ready for pick up in about two weeks. We already bought couple of bedroom windows and exterior doors for the rental units last week from H.D. because we plan on installing them this week. The bedrooms are required by law to have egress windows, they have to be at least 3ft x 5ft in dimension. The bathroom windows have to have tempered glass and the optional obscured effect added because they are going in to the ground floor. For the master bath, I ordered a 4ft. wide horizontal slider window to go above the shower. Justin and I had some disagreement on whether a window is necessary in the master bath, I was very adamant about having one. Maybe I am weird, but a bathroom or room without window just feels claustrophobic to me and I tend to avoid them like the plague.
I am trying not to order things too much ahead of time because we are running out of room in the garage. I am also not sure if the garage is all that safe either. We've had a couple of thefts in the house already so I am careful about putting things away at the end of the day. On Monday morning we discovered that someone had took the copper wire that that was lamped to the rebar before the concrete was poured, put there for grounding. The thief just cut it off and took about 14 foot of copper wire leaving about 6 inches sticking out of the foundation. Ugh! The other theft happened couple of weeks ago. Mr. Tree noticed that the rebar cutter and nail gun air compressor that were stored upstairs were both gone. There were no signs of forced entry, so it could be an inside job, but it definitely taught us a lesson; nothing is safe!
Okay moving on to the wood siding. My order of thirty three 16 foot and same number of 10 foot sidings from Home Depot were delivered on Tuesday, well most of the 10 footers. They delivered the missing pieces the next day except I noticed right away that one of them was the wrong width. The delivery man called the store and the store called later to confirm that they will deliver the right piece to me the next day. Let's hope they get it right this time.
I am into my second day of an epic priming session and I am about half way to the finish line. The reason it's taking so long is because I have to prime both sides of the planks twice. After the first side gets primed once, I have to wait for it to dry and prime it again, when the second coat dries, turn it over and repeat. Another time consuming step is moving each plank onto the sawhorses before painting and removing it onto the floor to dry. The 16 footers take a lot of paint and are also extremely difficult to maneuver in the narrow house. So it's going to take me another 2 maybe 3 days to finish priming all the planks. The discouraging part is that this is only part of the sidings we need. I think going forward, I will get the pre-primed sidings even if they do cost two and a half times more then the non-primed ones. The pre-primed planks are less work and are also better quality, so you do get what you pay for. The good stuff would've cost us over two and a half grand to get enough for the whole back of the house. So we went with the cheapies which was less than $1000 including 5 gallons of primer and painting supplies. I guess that's what they call "sweat equity".
Home Depot offers curbside delivery for $80.
First plank to be painted.
10 footers after the 1st coat of primer.
16 footers after the first coat of primer. 
The lower half of the back wall was completely torn out.
New exterior wall in place.
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