Great! That's so liberating, isn't it?

So, disney, are you from Tennessee by chance? :-) When I heard the female on the video, I thought I was hearing myself talking! It was kinda weird.

Heh, no, I grew up in Boston, actually. What you're hearing is 18 years of New England accent combined with 20 years of Georgia accent (a radio announcer I will never be!)

It WAS good to see that ugly old building come down.

The bad part is where it connected to the house is all rotted out because Harry Homeowner did it wrong back in the 70's and it all has to be repaired. Luckily we found the matching siding.

Amazing that it could just be pulled down! Looks like you are on your way to getting listed and sold.

Well, the garage is down and I'm on my fourth full sized dumpster (didn't budget for that, ow.)

My best friend was over today, and managed to order around and totally piss off my contractor, who left early to escape her.

I wanted to strangle her, seriously.

All I need now is for my contractor to quit with all the siding missing off the side of my house. Nice.

The most ironic part is that my memories of selling the last houses tell me that this isn't NEARLY as irritating as actually listing and selling the dang thing...

I called my contractor after she left and apologized to him and guaranteed she would not be there when he was again.

Geez.

Dumpsters are gone, beautiful new cedar siding is all in place, new window is in place, and the painter is coming out tomorrow.

I've learned to schedule my friend when contractor's away, LOL.

I'll post pictures when I can pry my kids off the home computer...

The best story so far, the pressure wash guy was out the day the garage was supposed to come down, and I told him I'd call him in two weeks once I was ready to have the house painted. He showed up yesterday and drove right by the house. I'm standing out in the front yard watching him and his crew and his trailer go by thinking, what??? He gets to the end of the road, turns around, comes back, and stops in front of our house. He gets out and says "I didn't recognize your house!" I say "is that a good thing or a bad thing?" and he said, "No, it looks so good without the garage thingie!"

It looks even better now that it's been gently (low pressure) washed, and all the concrete has been high pressure washed-you can barely see where the garage used to be and now it's a big flat perfect basketball sized playing slab (very hard to find in atlanta).

It's exciting to see the diamond (which I KNEW was in here somewhere when I bought it) emerging from the rough...

Before:

{{!gwi}}

Right now: (we also removed the extra concrete that had been added later that was just weird-our mantra with this house is 'back to the good, out with the weird!)

{{!gwi}}

So after all this work will you still want to sell!?

"so after all this work you still want to sell"

Yeah, I'm not so sure now...

I've lived with it ugly for so long (over two years, which is a long time for Miss Impatient me), that living with it starting to be pretty is a whole new sensation...

Is the second photo the after?

The second photo is "in between". The whole house just turned Primer White today. Tomorrow it gets a nice new coat of buff colored paint.

Covering that cedar was a big PITA, it just soaked up the primer (I used the really expensive Zinsser, stuff, too) we'll have to put another coat on tomorrow morning before we paint.

I cross posted the paint job photos in the home decorating forum...

I'm just curious why you used cedar on the garage disney (apologies if I missed it somewhere). Is this something you have to use in the south for some reason? It just seems expensive. Cedar is more expensive isn't it? Not slamming you, just curious about the decision knowing that you were going to sell. I think a lot of people would have gone for a less expensive option because its hard to get money back.

The entire house is clad in 8" cedar lap siding, and the new siding has to match the old siding. It costs 1.20/linear foot.

We felt that putting something else in there would be ugly because nothing even comes close to matching the siding. Plus it seems like the right thing to do because cedar is such a good choice for siding because of its durability.

However, if I could have found a match in Hardiplank and it had been cheaper, I definitely would have gone that route.

Whoever originally built the house paid a lot of attention to using good materials-the nickname for the house is "the tank" both because of the color and the original owner was a big fan of why use 1 nail when you can use 3 screws. The stone on the front of the house is about 6-8" thick-let's hope that never needs replacing-I can see it now "I need some BOULDERS for the front of my house, do you have any in stock?"

It's nice to have a sturdy house, right up until you have to replace things, then it's like, ow, that's expensive!!!