Terre Haute House Repair - Garden
As if we hadn't enough to do with renovating, restoring, improving and redecorating the interior of the house we thought we'd may as well do some of the outstanding jobs in the garden and around the out-buildings.
The pool house was a bit of a mess. I'd tried to repair the doors sveral times, but the plywood had split and the hinges kept sagging so it was time to do something to it.
The Pool House - 1st August 2009
The Pool House - 17th August 2009
This little shed now has new doors and siding. A few years ago we had a new back porch or veranda built and we kept the left over siding used to roof that. There was just enough to use on the shed. It improved it's appearance no end.
Behind our old garage that we now use as a general storeroom, we have a small leanto. This is the "you never know shed" where we keep some of the junk that might be useful at some time in the future but what we don't want to keep with the other junk we keep in the house or in the garages.
Over the years the woodwork had started to deteriorate very badly. I'd patched bits of it up but during the building work on the house we decided to tidy this shed up as well. A lot of the old wall boards had to be replaced and by coincidence one of out neighbours was throwing away some old roofing oilcloth so we used that to cover the walls as well.
The "You Never Know" Shed - 1st August 2009
The "You Never Know" Shed - 16th August 2009
Several years ago I put a padlock on the door of this shed but it got jimmied off the very same night. I don't know if the dumbass who did that thought that we'd actually keep anything valuable out in the back alley or whether there was an interior door to the old garage. Nothing was taken as the only things the old ever shed contains is stuff like old flowerpots and and a whole bunch of cobwebs.
The house renovation produces a whole bunch of trash. A few years ago Terre Haute moved from collecting household trash in plastic bags to using wheelie bins. We recycle nearly everthing, either by using the Indiana State University recycling facility or our own compost heap, so we normally use about 1/2 a plastic bin liner of trash a week. The last few weeks our wheelie bin has been full, in fact, if the neighbour's bins are only half used we'll fill up theirs as well. The wheelie bins, part of ours can be seen in the above photo, are great, as they are mechanically lifted and emptied they can hold a great deal of weight.
Some of our building debris
The outside of the house not made of brick is covered by cedar shingles. Over the years they started to look a bit nasty. We'd already painted most of the outside of the house in 2006 but for some reason we never actually got round to doing the wall between the house and our neighbours. This was rectified in August 2009.
House Exterior - 16th August 2009
A couple of years ago, when we originally painted the outside of the house some of the cedar shingles needed replacing. In the end we bought three packs of assorted cedar shingles to replace the dozen or so that needed replacing with something that looked similar. Ever since the unused shingles have been stored in our "you never know" shed. I'm glad we kept them as when we replaced the back door we needed some of them to make good around our new back door. After shaping and fitting the new shingle parts any gaps were filled with silicone sealant ready for repainting.
Repaired shingles around the back door - 30th October 2009
Freezing temperatures - Winter 2009 / 2010
The winter of 2009 / 2010 was odd with lots of freezing and thawing. The force of this pulled this downpipe from the wall which had to be repaired in the spring of 2010.
This page created 2nd August 2009, last modified 4th April 2010
