Too Cold For Camping - Working on a House Project - BEAR in the backyard!!

I can't believe it's the third week of April already and we aren't able to get out and do any camping. A lot of the campgrounds around here don't open till May 1st or even May 15th. 

We have been quite cool in Wisconsin this spring, our nights are down in the 30s or even the high 20s. The days have only been getting up in the 50s and once in awhile we hit the 60s. 

But that's okay, it gives us some time to get a few projects done around the house, even if we have to wear jackets to do them. 

We had an idea in mind, and we placed an order from Home Depot. Free shipping!  Sure beats having to drive 35 miles one way to get to their store. 

The boxes arrived and we were ready to begin...

(Doesn't Steve look enthused?)

So what was inside?? Seven 4x8 panels of vinyl lattice! I like this style with the horizontal/vertical squares instead of the diagonal stuff. In my mind, the diagonal pattern is so "1970s ish". 

We got them all unloaded, and Steve cut down the boxes for recycling. We had ordered four packs of stainless steel screws with white painted heads. One of the boxes was tore open at the bottom and two of the packs had fallen out somewhere along the way.

We contacted Home Depot, and they literally sent a driver 35 miles one way in a car to personally deliver the two missing packs of screws the same day! Talk about customer service. 

This is why we decided to order new lattice... The stuff that was on the home when we bought it has needed repainting three times already in the last 7 years. It is treated wood that just doesn't seem to hold the paint very well. Even using exterior porch and floor enamel doesn't do it.  Besides, like I said, I don't really care for the diagonal lattice.

This home originally never had any lattice underneath the front porch. Here's a photo from back in the 1920s or the 1930s. Nope, no lattice.  One of the families who used to live here had posted these photos on Ancestry.com. It was wonderful to see pictures of our house from way back then.

During that time, a little widow lady lived here. It was a farm on the outskirts of town. The land had not yet been annexed from the township into the city limits. She lived here on two and a half acres, with a barn out in the back. She raised chickens and sold eggs to people in town and to the local grocers. I guess that's how she sustained herself in her "widowhood" years. 

Here is the barn in the background. All that remains is some of the cement slab of the foundation now.

Somewhere in the 1950s or so the house underwent a rather garish color change!!! 

Yep, it was bright blue with pink trim--- oh my!  (and still no lattice under the porch)

In the 1960s it had been painted a very dark dark teal blue green color, similar to the Gumby toy color from the 1960s. LOL. We saw chips of the color when we were removing the old siding to replace it with new LP Smart Siding. We don't have a picture of that color, but we know it was there underneath the layers. 

Sometime in the 1970s the home was turned into rental property. It had been severely beaten up by renters over the years. People moved in and out and it became pretty rugged. In talking to the mail lady, at one point there were over 14 people living in here. Sometime around then this lattice was added underneath the porch. I got this picture from Google Earth of previous dates. Yep, it was pretty beat up and rough by then.  The lattice was just cheap treated panels screwed on underneath the porch edge. 

Not only was the house pretty beat up, the yard was in rugged shape too. This is before the big four stall garage was built on the left side where the boat is parked in this photo. That was added in 2015.

We bought the house in 2019. The lattice looked pretty ugly and the whole house needed a facelift. We could see the diamond in the rough and we knew that we were ready to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear.

One of the first things I did in 2019 was to scrub down all of that lattice. Then I primed it with white. I spent a couple days shuffling around on my little bucket from section to section.  I primed it all before painting.

I had painted the lattice red to match the shutters we put on the house and the paint on the steps. Every two years the lattice has needed re-painting, or at least touch ups in certain areas. I do enjoy painting, but this was getting to be too much maintenance on lattice that I didn't even like.

We also added new windows, new siding, a new roof, and a lot of landscaping and love to bring the home to where it is today.

Fast forward to today's project:

As soon as the new vinyl lattice arrived from Home Depot, we felt good enough to unscrew the old stuff, one panel at a time. I measured each panel so I knew what size we would have to cut the new ones before we put them on. 

We stacked the old panels by the road with a free sign on it. Things move quickly around here when you put a free sign on it. We post on a local Marketplace group for our town with the words "CURB ALERT". 

Within half an hour, six of the seven panels were gone. I have no idea why they didn't take the 7th panel. There is also a little triangle piece from alongside of the stairs.  Maybe they didn't need seven? So now it's been out there for a week and nobody has stopped to get the last panel. I think we're going to bust it apart and put it in the burn pile.

Since we are both just getting over RSV, we don't even have our strength back yet. We decided to hire this enterprising young 14-year-old to do the hard stuff for us:

(he also happens to be our grandson)

Clayton came over after school and went right to work. We had him clear out all of the rocks and debris and old leaves and dead plants from underneath the entire width of the porch.  He found a few "treasures" and worked hard. He was all bent over with his gangly 6-ft teenager frame and got quite dirty in the process.

He hauled out wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full of debris. We sure couldn't do that and we absolutely didn't want to be bent over during the process either. It was well worth it to hire our grandson. 

Once he got all the junk out, he raked things smooth. This is about a 50 ft span across the entire front of the house. He did a great job for us.  He filled in a big hole that some critter had made. We had also seen some chew marks on the wooden lattice.  We hope it was either from a rabbit or a possum, and not a skunk!  The new lattice has smaller holes and hopefully that will deter them from wanting to make their home underneath their porch in the future.

Clayton discovered three bird nests underneath the porch. Two of them were empty so we took them down. The third one has three robin eggs in it!  We will leave off the end panel of the lattice until the babies are born and fledged away on their own. Then we will put on the final panel. Mr. and Mrs. Robin were not too happy with Clayton being underneath there. He got dive bombed a couple times...

Once he had everything level, then he unrolled some heavy landscape fabric. We had bought a hundred foot roll so he was able to double up some of the layers. We sure couldn't have crawled around to do this part.

Then he used metal hoop type staples to secure it down. He went through 50 staples to make sure it was going to stay in place.  I think he enjoyed that part. 

After he was done, I painted all of the front porch supports and joists so they would look better in between the squares of the new lattice.  It looked pretty ugly. 

It really brightened it up and looked a lot better before we put on the lattice. Things needed to dry overnight and we needed to take a break. 

We wanted to get all this lattice up before all of the perennial plants get any taller. They are already peeking out of the ground and starting to set up shoots. We had to be careful not to step on any of them.

Clayton returned the second day after school to help Grandpa with attaching more of the vinyl panels. I helped with the first one, and then I was taking video while they finished up the next five. It went pretty fast. Clayton had dug little trenches down in the ground to get the panels wedged in on the bottom. We had bought extra strips of treated wood to run along the bottom of the panels down underground. But this stuff was pretty firm and really didn't need it. 

We were very pleased with how it came out! In this photo below the little triangle part is not yet installed on the side of the steps. Steve did that the next day.

Clayton had done an absolutely wonderful job for us. Usually he cuts grass and edges sidewalks for his customers. This was a little out of his wheelhouse of jobs to do. We were so thankful that he helped us with it, because we did not have the energy to do it ourselves.

He didn't want to charge us, but we insisted! Plus, he got a good meal, and an extra tip when he was done. 

I can't wait till it warms up enough to hang my favorite three pots of ferns from the porch and add the windowboxes to the railings. I love that look every year. Going to have to wait till about the middle of May before we even think about putting out plants. 

It's early in the season here, but this big guy woke up out in the woods and came wandering around in our neighborhood. He's looking for something to eat!!!

We bring in the bird feeders every night and the suet block so we don't encourage him. But he came lumbering through about 9:00 p.m. he didn't find anything good here so he kept on going. Let's see if the short video clip works here:

Otherwise, you can see it on the video that goes along with this entire blog over on YouTube: 

Hang with us and we will be out camping as soon as the weather warms up!!