Back to Work!

About a year ago we were taking siding off the back of the house. Today we returned to the front side of the house. We had already taken down the vinyl siding (and then covered up for winter with the blue tarps). Today the tarps came down for a while so that we could pull down the brown fiber board. This required a lot of nail pulling. The people who originally built this house really loved to hammer. Tom found four 4" finishing nails in one spot! We pulled down all of the brown board, the fiberglass insulation behind it, and scraped out remnants of old termite tunnels.

We pulled the siding off last summer. You can see the brown board (very musty smelling!) and lots of nail heads.

Brown board off and windows coming out.

Stripped down

In February, when it was dry enough, we worked on building the retaining wall to hold back the hill that we excavated out on the NW side of the house. We've got almost 300 concrete blocks in so far. The cavities are filled with gravel for drainage and compost/manure for growing plants . . . eventually.

Retaining wall

A bit further to go