The Siding Saga

One thing that was at the top of our list when house hunting (all 45 minutes of it), was to find a house that wouldn’t require a lot of work. Coming home to find Jonathan in our basement rewiring something (be it electrical outlets, phone lines, or our internet connection) is fine but that’s about as far as I want to take it. I’ll save the DIY for planting a garden, painting the house, fixing the fence, and even installing a bocce ball court. Other than that, we simply don’t have the time to devote to a fixer-upper.

That’s why the news this weekend came as somewhat of a blow. It turns out we need our entire house resided. Oh, and our windows were installed wrong and all the flashing needs to be redone.

This came as a surprise because we’d already had a number of painters come look at the house and the state of the siding never came up—that is, until we asked a friend of ours for a quote. We were going to have John replace the vinyl siding on the gables with shingles and we figured we may as well get a quote for the paint job as well.

“I wouldn’t guarantee it more than 5 years. This siding will need replacing by then.”

All at once, we had a $10,000 fixer-upper project on our hands.

On the upside, we needed someone to tell us that before we went ahead and painted. That, of course, is my view now. At the time, I think I walked straight into the kitchen and poured myself a drink. Looks like we’ll be living in a mint green house for a few years longer.