Goodbye Attached Garage, Hello She Shed!!!

 On to our next project----

THE BIG ONE!!!

SOOOOO what is the big one?

It's my She Shed!!!

We are converting the single attached garage into a "She Shed" for my weaving looms, quilting frame, and an area with our patio furniture that will be like a sun porch and mudroom space. This is our basic sketch to utilize the space to it's best features, as well as look out at our big backyard while we are in the She Shed.  (yes, Steve can come in my She Shed and hang out in the Sun Room area) ....

We have this amazing view out the back over our 2.5 acres ... 

Our house only has two small windows in the kitchen 

 and one bathroom window that look out to the east.

The view is being "wasted" and not enjoyed.

Four tall floor to ceiling french door type windows will face out the East side of the room.

This will be the main view out of them. Ahhhhhhhh 

We get a lot of wildlife, including deer, turkeys, cranes, foxes 

and a lot of birds at our feeders.

On the opposite wall, 

we will have 3 new windows facing west 

in place of the garage door too.

Through the magic of photoshop, here is what we are proposing.

We started drawing up our plans and got the proper building permit filed. Everything must be done up to code of course. Steve and I poured over ideas and plans and made our cut list and decided to start shopping for materials as each sale came about.

We have just about everything stockpiled right now to get this room going, so it was finally time to start.  The attached garage and mud room are about 24 x 20.  It will be a great space to put all of my fiber toys, as well as our front porch furniture in an area designated as a sun room.

~~~~~~~~

Our first step was to reinforce the roof/ceiling on back side where there was a sag. Steve needed to construct a support beam and some headers of 2 by 12's, three boards thick. He was fortunate to find someone who was tearing down a building and was selling a whole stack of them for $100. Now he had enough for the beam as well as headers over the windows and doors too.

With the help of our son-in-law's father Gaylen, they jacked up the roof rafters, put in a temp wall, and then got the big 3 layer thick beam into place. Now the roof is supported correctly and level.

The next step was to install a side entry door for access back and forth to our big garage. This will be our main entry into the house from the rear into the She Shed and then up into our kitchen area inside. Company still comes in the front  door. We are going to get some little paving stones or maybe build a board walk for a walkway between the two buildings. They are only 12 feet apart.

So this added She Shed room will be somewhat of a mudroom and sunroom as well as a area for my crafts and looms and quilting machines.

I prepped the outdoor area before Steve started to cut through the doorway.  I moved some of these hostas to other parts of the yard.  Then I gave away the rest of the hostas that to a few people on Facebook Marketplace. Once I was done painting the siding, I planted a bunch of perennial seeds saved by my friend Juanita. I also planted some bulbs from my parents when they were visiting from Florida. We trimmed out the flower bed with some little paving stones that match the rest of the flower beds around the house.

Our friend John was concerned that we were cutting through asbestos siding. But no, it is real cedar wood siding. I had painted the North side of the She Shed and it really cleaned it up and looks good. The front grubby portions in this photo below will be gone soon.....

We decided to get a good quality door that has full glass from top to bottom with little grids sandwiched between the thermal panes of glass. That way we can have light coming into the room from the North side, but still have it seal up for year-round weather.

Actually, we ordered two doors, so the other one can go on the South side. That doorway leads to the doggy potty yard and additional access to the other side of our basement.  We will work on that later as it's not high priority right now.

It was exciting to cut through the cedar siding and the wall to make the opening for the door. I made a little YouTube video of my incredible hulk taking care of the procedure.

The door went into place very well and we even added a digital door lock for ease of family access. He plumbed it up, shimmed into place and reinforced the threshold. After these pics were taken, Steve trimmed it out and I painted it all to match.

Now that the door was done, the next step was to remove the single 8 by 8 garage door on the west side of the attached garage. Removing the door was easy, and Steve had a temporary wall up into place to hold everything level.

Working working working....

We took it apart piece by piece, and removed the too-small header as well the extra siding on top. The metal garage door is being re-purposed up to my brother's cottage for one of his outbuildings.  Love it that it can find a new use.

We will cover the upper portion over the windows with Smart Siding that closely matches the rest of the wood clapboard siding on the rest of the house.  New soffits and fascia are also going up.  He put the temporary wall into place and we were able to lift up the new heavier stronger header by ourselves. 

Steve had pre-made the new wall to go in the place of the 8x8 garage door.  It has access for the three windows that will be facing to the West. What three windows, you ask? 

We had been wandering in the local home supply store and found three windows that someone had special ordered and cancel the order. They were very nice high quality windows at a real discount of almost 50% off. It turned out they were exactly the size that we needed to do three windows across that opening!! Of course, they had them marked down because the order had been cancelled from the original price. We took the time to find a manager and ask if we took all three of the windows, could we save any additional costs? He knocked an additional $25 off each window so we would take all three! Score!!!

This morning, I helped Steve put the permanent wall into place and he removed the temporary wall. The studs and the big header are all in to support the roof line properly.

Man oh man that ceiling soars up to 11 feet high!!!!

As I draft this blog, he is working on the exterior OSB board for above and below the windows.

We are heading out later today with the trailer and the Tracker to go pick up the matching Smart Siding that is on sale this week. It's horribly hot and humid today.  The heat index is about 96 and we are not going to work on the room anymore until the sun goes down. Looks like I will have some more painting to do as soon as the humidity drops by Saturday.

Steve helped our daughter and son-in-law yesterday with the water pump on their well for their house. Also I babysat for their kids so their babysitter could leave early to go camping for the holiday weekend.

We don't like to go camping over Fourth of July because the fireworks are way too stressful on our dogs. If they are home, at least in the house, with loud music or TV playing.... it can kind of drown out the sound of anything going on in the neighborhood. Our city had fireworks last night over at the Breakwater Park but it wasn't too loud at our home. We could see them from the backyard though, which was nice.

Time to get some easy supper put together on this hot humid day. Thank goodness for central air inside of Our National Folk Farmhouse.

HAPPY FOURTH 

OF JULY

Our National Folk Farmhouse Updates

Back at it.

Honestly, we have been so crazy busy I haven't been taking any time to blog. And I really should!

Thank you, to all of my blog readers, for still supporting my blog even though I took this hiatus. By you readers taking the time and reading through my past blog posts, especially the ones on motorhome modifications and house projects, you are clicking on my ads and helping out to support my blog. I just got a monthly check from AdSense again and realized that I had better get back to it and do some more blogging.

We have been really busy... 

and this is the result so far:

from this when we bought it in April:

One of the first exterior changes I wanted to make was to remove the funny plastic lattice that was covering the porch rails and spindles. It was really tacky and although I had plans for the lower wooden lattice, I am not a fan of lattice whatsoever.

This is the plastic lattice I am talking about:

Here is how it looked after removing it. We know the spindle spacing on the railings is incorrect and not up to code. We have added it to our building permit and we are going to take care of the railings at a later date. For now they are grandfathered in as they are. We do have some real original two-by-fours that are actually 2in by 4in that we are going to be able to cut up and replace all of the missing spindles that are also exactly 2in by 2in.

As for the exterior transformation, the process took me a couple weeks. I started with painting the red lattice underneath the porch as fast as I could. I wanted to get it painted before disturbing all of the flowers that started growing in front of it.

I started with a white primer spray that soaked into this old and dried out unstained lattice wood. I could never understand why people let lattice turn gray instead of painting it. To me, any of that pressure treated wood looks funny when left to turn gray and look weathered.

  

Now for the red. I did not want to use a sprayer because of the overspray drifting onto any of the white surfaces. Instead, I patiently set on a bucket --- working section-by-section with a brush --- getting it into all the nooks and crannies of each little piece of lattice.

I had soft Celtic music playing on my little MP3 player and worked my way across the entire 45 ft long veranda and around both corners too.

While I was doing it, all I could think about was that I was giving our Folksy Farmhouse some "love"!

The window boxes were brown but I used this really good Dutch Boy paint called Max Bond Exterior that works on plastic surfaces (Use on properly prepared exterior siding and trim of previously painted or bare vinyl, aluminum, masonry, stucco, wood, galvanized metal, and primed steel.)

We added the window boxes along the porch edge, and the potted plants on the front porch as well as the front porch furniture. I covered my blue and white front porch fabric cushions with red plastic checkered tablecloths for water proofing!  We may have plans to use that porch furniture in another place, so I am not ready to recover them permanently with waterproof fabric. This will "do" for now.

The next major improvement that we have made is that I have scrubbed and painted the front facade of the house, and we added shutters.

The old white wood siding looked awful and grubby and actually even moldy. I sprayed it down with the garden hose, and then I gave it a light misting of Tilex bathroom cleaner. Yep, that's right. Bathroom cleaner! I put a couple bottles worth in a pump up lawn sprayer jug and lightly misted the entire house on the west and north sides.

Within a few minutes all of the mold and dirt disappeared!!  I gave it a light brushing with a soft-bristled brush on an extension handle. We use that for washing our motorhome.

 Then I gave it a spray with the hose 

and all of the dirt just came right off!

What a satisfying project to work on. It was like night and day to see all of the dark gray and black slide off and  leave fresh white siding underneath

Our original plans were someday replacing the wood siding with Smart Siding. But now after doing these two portions of the house that came out amazingly well, I think we will keep what we have.  Best to retain the historic charm of a National Folk Farmhouse with real wood siding.

I let the siding dry for two days and then picked a cool morning to roll on some fresh white paint on the front of the house siding. I worked a little section at a time.  The results were very satisfying to paint something and have it look so much better as you go along. You see your immediate accomplishment as your roller and paintbrush transform the exterior.

The sellers left us brand new shutters for every window. The only problem is they were black. I chose red for our accent color on this house. Up the street there's a white house with black shutters, and down the street there's a white house with black shutters. I repainted these two coats with the red paint.

The sellers also left a 5 gallon bucket of thick gray porch and floor oil enamel paint so I was able to pressure wash and do the porch floor surface --- as well as the side cement of the foundation to spruce that up to look nicer.

The front stairs will be painted too, 

but not until we bring them up to code 

and correct the rise and tread and railings 

with our newly acquired building permit. 

There was a very tall oversized colonial looking front porch light. I really didn't care for the style of it.  The tip of it almost reaches the beadboard ceiling. It didn't look right and was quite large for the space it was occupying.  The red wreath is covering up a funny yellowed outdoor electrical outlet.

I was nosing around at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore the other day. I found this much smaller and more "farmhouse" looking front porch light for only $10. It was a funny mauve/dusty rose color. Out came my red paint and it was soon transformed into an adorable accent light for our front porch.

The grandkids have been coming over a lot and sharing in some of our projects. Here is Jameson helping Grandpa to install the front porch light. He learned Lefty Loosey Righty Tighty. He helped with the bracket part of screwing the light fixture on, but Grandpa did the electrical connections, after turning off the breaker. So Jameson is learning to respect electricity and also that you can recycle and repurpose something to look good.

(and it matches his new hair color)

We will later attach the oversized colonial looking coachlight onto the side of the big garage. It has a motion detector sensor on it which will be nice in that dark portion of the yard. The larger size will look okay on the long tall side of the garage. So nothing is going to waste. Just moving around.

So far, here is what the exterior front of the house looks like. I'm quite pleased that we got it this far along, while working on other projects with Steve on the inside as well.  Most of the painting and cleaning and sprucing up is my doing... because Steve is working on something else I will start blogging about in the next blog.

We really love this front porch now. 

The family comes over and we sit out and visit...

the kids wander up and down the stairs, 

back in the yard and around to the front. 

With 2.5 acres now, they have room to roam. 

I'm very pleased with all of the amazing perennials that are popping up around the house as well. There are flower beds that almost completely encircle the entire house that are chock-full of perennials carefully planted over the years and arranged by the previous owners.

As for the grandkids, they have also been helping me with watering my flowers and hauling around items in the wheelbarrow and the Little Red Wagon to help us out with projects. It is delightful to have them come over and spend time with us.


I think in the next blog series,  I'm going to talk about what we're doing each day .... and also add one project at a time of what we've done since I last posted a blog. That way I can catch it up slowly.

 We have been doing a lot of little jobs and now we are tackling THE BIG ONE!!!

SOOOOO what is the big one?

It's my She Shed!!!

(stay tuned)