Along with the massive siding project, we finally broke down and hired an electrician to put up every light we had purchased in the last seven years for the Red House as well as a new fan for the ping pong room. Oh yeah, maybe someone who could even put real covers on all the exposed switches?

Yes, you can live like that for years and years when you no longer have any young children running around.

First to be capped were the exposed wires in the kitchen we had been looking at for at least three years.

Next was the dangling light bulb that was replaced with a soft glow “sputnik” and a funky new fan whose glass cover broke so we have to try and find one that size. (Initial research has revealed that this, however, will not be an easy task since it’s not a “standard” size. )

I was just happy I wasn’t the one who had to stand on a step stool (or more likely a paint-splattered chair) holding up a light fixture while Lynn attempted to install it and not electrocute himself.  There are just some things we refuse to do anymore and this has become one of those things.

Besides the new lights throughout the house, we have finally finished all the siding. The installers said it would take one week which I was skeptical about considering the size of the house and hence I took off 2.5 weeks from work to be here to make sure that all went according to plan. When all was said and done, it took them 8 days – they lost one day to rain, one day to “camping,” and one other day to do a window installation at another property.

Here are some pictures of the process.  We even got to see the original color of the house (dark brown) when they tore off some of the old shingles.

And yes, the Red House is still RED! And while I was skeptical about the color of the siding when I saw it online, I have to say the Red House looks really really nice. I was worried that the vinyl would look really plastic-y but it doesn’t.  It looks exactly like the color it should be. Watching people drive by the house, it’s been amusing to see people do double takes when they see the sudden transformation. Not so amusing is that someone from the post office took it upon themselves to stop delivering our mail because they thought someone else had bought the house and finally made it look “pretty”!) Can you even imagine that?  It took me two phone calls over two days along with a trip downtown to chat with the postmaster in charge to have this corrected.

Meanwhile the other morning, there was an older gentleman taking pictures of the Red House while his wife was sitting in the car.  I politely inquired what he was doing and it turns out they are friends with one of the early owners of the house (that would be 1950’s not 1850’s!). They were going to visit this elderly couple and wanted to show them the “progress” of the house. When the wife got out of the car and joined in our conversation, she was eager to know if we had kept the third staircase in the kitchen. (I politely told her we did not.) But “what about those wonderful wood floors?” she asked. I told her they were still there but were in pretty bad shape and we were wondering what to do – refinish or totally redo.

It’s difficult to try and convey to people what the house looked like both inside and outside and now with the new siding it will be even more of a challenge.  Although I don’t think this blog and the tale of the Red House is quite over yet, ironically I am missing the look of the old beaten up Red House a bit.

So here’s her new look! (Of course the Red House is a she.)

And yes, we absolutely still need some front stairs, a new garage, a mason to redo the foundation and last but not least landscaping please!

Imagine then if you can that after a quick dinner and a bottle of wine, all I really wanted to do was jump in the shower and go to sleep.  Except when I turned on the hot water in the new bathroom, the water was barely luke warm. Ditto for the kitchen, the guest bathroom and the downstairs bathroom. I sucked it up to “old” pipes and figured we would deal with it in the morning. (Except most of the pipes have been replaced and therefore not “old.” )

In the morning, Lynn and I went down to the scary basement where we proceeded to stand and stare at the old water heater. Yep, there it stood.  Ironically, this is the first hot water heater we’ve ever had in any home we’ve lived in (not that it made an iota of difference in this situation) but the fact that there was this gizmo that made hot water like magic was impressive considering our history of being hot water heater-less for over 30 years.

After a suitable amount of time staring at the darn thing, we went upstairs and I started to call plumbers. Plumber #1 was on vacation. Plumber #2 was retired. Plumber #3 had to go to a wedding and a funeral in the same day and didn’t think he could swing by the house.  I called our contractor who said he would come out and “take a look,” but he had to cook a birthday/graduation meal for like 300 people (well maybe 30 but you get the idea) so could we just shower cold until Monday?

Since the sole purpose of visiting the Red House that weekend was to deal with all the  weeds and the vines that were growing around and up the side of the house (meaning we had to cut them down), in order to prepare for the siding installation, we figured lots of hot sweaty work outdoors would be just fine when faced with our cold shower conundrum.

We had lots of vines growing up one side of the house in particular that had the Red House been a stone cottage somewhere in the south of France or even Tuscany it might have been particularly pretty but here it just didn’t work.

So we pulled and we tugged until we noticed a big part of the vines had attached themselves semi-permanently to a heavy black electrical wire going out to the street. Deciding that we didn’t want to risk electrocution or take down the power lines for the entire neighborhood with a too hard tug to try and dislodge the feisty plant, we left it as is.

Then we moved onto the weeds. There were weeds that were nearly as tall as I am (that would be 5 foot 8 inches). Some were easy to simply pull out of the ground, others needed to be cut down with a knife and some really stubborn ones needed the weed wacker.

This was an incredible amount of hard work on a really HOT DAY which is exactly what we needed given our hot water situation.  It took us about 5 hours (who says Upstate isn’t fun?) but we did get it all done and while I did take a cold shower, I will admit that I washed my hair in the sink (less traumatic that way.)

Meanwhile a quick garden update. The tomatoes are bountiful this year, but the zucchini is just revealing blossoms no fruit.  But I’m excited we have our first ever acorn squash! I haven’t seen the evil bunny in a while, so I’m hoping he/she has left the property!

TEN DAYS LATER

We arrived Wednesday night (8:30! No traffic!) to find our new hot water heater installed AND WORKING.  Look how pretty it looks!

Yes, the water is sufficiently hot although it does take a while to get up to the second floor from the basement. (I’m not complaining.)

In the morning, the first of many boxes of siding and insulation and wood appeared in our driveway – the start of a very difficult and large job.

So far so good. The siding is nearly a perfect match for the exact color red we wanted. After all, the Red House couldn’t suddenly become yellow or green or grey!

Stay tuned.