One Room Challenge Week 2

Well here we are! The second week of the Fall 22 ORC! Unfortunately I didnt have my blog up and running in time for a week one post, so I’m going to do a combined one for this week. You can find more information and see all the particiants by clicking here.

For Week one I shared that I will be renovating our living room. You can see the mood board above depicts the vibe we are going for.

When we moved into our house last December we immediately found a lot of issues in this space and knew it would need more than a new coat of paint. Some of the bigger issues included needing the roof on the whole house replaced, the chimney leaking onto the fireplace, and the left corner of the room by the fireplace not being sound. The big window in the room was also broken. Nothing seemed like it would be an easy or inexpensive fix.

It felt like things just spiraled from there. While preparing for the roof to be replaced we found the casue of the chiney leak. The previous owners had put vynil siding right over the top of the existing chiney and hadn’t used the proper flashing which allowed water to get in. Wet wood ants discover it and went to town. There was a big beam that was holing up the roof that the ants had eaten down to nothing. Our roofer told us had it not been for the brick wall inside, the roof would have caved in long ago. We were so glad we hadn’t imideatly stared gutting this room prior to the roof being fixed.

With all the damage the chiney had to be torn dow and rebuilt. Ideally we would have loved to do brick but our budget kept taking hit after hit. In the end we settled on this gorgeous cedar siding instead.

Next up we needed new window. This window is deceptively big. It is 5 feet tall and 10.5 feet long. It is a heavy window and because of the way it was installed it had stared sagging in the middle and warping the frame, which in turn made the window non operable. We had a few companies come out and quote us, but we ended up going with Andersen Windows. They were more expensive, but with the size of the window we felt most comfortable with the quality and craftsmanship. The added warranty on top of it all gave us the peace of mind to move forward with such a large purchase.

In talking with the Andersen Rep. We discussed our future plans to remove the vinyl siding and he suggested doing that before having the window installed. Another spiral. After much debate on what our future plans for the outside of the home were we decided that we would only focus on the siding around the living room. We knew it was a project we could tackle with the time and budget we had.

So we got to work removing the old and replacing and fixing what we could. We spent this last week preparing to paint and we are beyond thrilled with the outcome!

We hope to continue removing the vinyl and updating the existing siding as we renovate the rest of our home. Ideally it will be a project we tackle next summer, but we have learned to just sort of play things by ear with this house and its renovations. Thanks for reading along! Don’t forget to check out the One Room Challenge Blog and see what other participants are up to. See you next week!