Chompin’ At The Bit

That’s what I am. I’m in full Stage-One mode with the house painting. Stage one is where I’m revitalized and ready to get to work on the next section. Stage 2 is where I’m demoralized that the work is dragging on, and stage three is where I’m tired, but I feel good that the paint job is coming out nice. Now, if everyone will get out their chart, we can see that the next section would be Section 4. This is the first section on the north side of the house.

I had speculated at one point that I might not have to strip the north side back to bare wood. Unfortunately that was wrong. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Well, I guess I could have somehow been more wrong, but I wasn’t. It must be stripped back to bare wood. Even more unfortunate is the fact that I can’t start until maybe Sunday because I have to do some work on the stupid apartment building first.

The stupid apartment building is the stupid garage building in my stupid backyard. It has 2 stupid apartment upstairs that seem to need something done to them every 6 months or so. I didn’t even mention that 2 weekends ago I had to replace the wax ring on one of the toilets. That sort of thing never gets old. The garage building was built in 1926. So imagine that you have an old house you live in and work on, and then imagine you have another one right behind you that you also have to work on. If it wasn’t for the fact that it pays the mortgage I’d burn it to the ground.

It’s fun to bitch and moan about it, but it could be much worse, and I know that. Still! {***Sigh***} I don’t like working on the apartments. I have a dream of one day taking out a fat loan like Steve and Jocelyn did over at Chicago 2 Flat. I would then have a team of highly trained professionals come in and do a whiz-bang job of a restoration on the apartments. I then could jack up the rents, while at the same time not have to do as much work on them because everything would be new and shiny. At least the stuff that seems to break all the time would be new and shiny. However, I don’t think I could handle the stress of two major projects on the property right now. Perhaps when I’m further along on The Petch House I’ll do that.

At any rate, this time the project on the apartment building is shingle repair. As I said the building was built in 1926. It’s a Mission Revival building with shingles on the second story and horizontal siding on the first story. For the most part the siding is in good to passable shape. I’m lucky that the part that doesn’t look so good faces the alley, so I’m not chompin’ at the bit to fix it. Most of it is passable, so I let it be. The problem area is the South/West corner. Surprise, surprise, right? After 80 years of being beat to crap by wind, sun, and rain the singles aren’t doing so good. There was also a little matter of a holly tree that grew up against the side of the building and sort of push some of the shingles around. The tree is gone but the damage remains.

As always, there are photos

This is the North/East corner. Doesn’t look too bad, right?


This is the alley side. It’s passable.


And this is the South West Corner. Ouch!


Yea, this is what I need to deal with. Ideally, I would re-shingle the whole south side, but that ain’t gunna happen, at least not this year. There are a lot of curling shingles, but they still shed water for the most part. Basically, the plan is to re-shingle this corner and see if I can stave off the major work for another year or two. Actually, the plan is that a giant earthquake will occur that is completely localized directly under the apartment. I huge creator will open up and swallow the building whole, but not before the tenants get safely out. That would be perfect. Hmmm, I’d better get earthquake insurance on the apartment building - just incase.