House Exterior Summer 2017

This is a post to just mention some of the exterior work that I will need to tackle soon.

Over the winter or spring, I noticed that my electrical pole had come loose from the top, where it's anchored to the house. The reason: the two top plastic brackets had broken. Easy fix, but it took me about a month to pick up the supplies and actually get it done. I replaced all 4 brackets with new ones, and I did that yesterday.

In the photo below, the blue arrows show the brackets I replaced. The red arrow is another clip that had been torn out. The clip was still attached to the wire, so I only had to change the screw.



I should note that even though this was only about a 20-30min job, this was TERRIFYING for me to do, because it involved being up about 15 feet on a crappy and rickety ladder. I don't deal well with heights.

The entire top of the pole was curved away from the house. I thought I had taken a "before" photo. I looked everywhere for it, and apparently I didn't take one.



There are still a whole bunch of other small issues on the outside of the house that will eventually need attention.

There's still the hole in the fascia from the squirrels (which is blocked-up with metal mesh wire). Then there are the old grooves/tracks/brackets from previous electrical hookups. I'd love to remove all this and patch the siding. I have all the siding that was on the porch that I could use here. Currently these tracks are letting in some water into the porch. I still have the hole in the ceiling tongue and groove inside the porch. All the porch windows are also badly in need of restoration. Lots of the putty is flaking out and they need paint.



I have an oak sapling growing under the porch as well. Probably due to a squirrel, since the large oak tree is about a block away. I've sprayed it with Round-Up (poison) but it will need another application. I also still badly need to redo the porch bottom. I'm getting rid of the lattice and installing panels.



A while back I had a piece of metal fascia flashing that tore off this corner of the house. I also have a few torn-off roof shingles.



Then there are the garage/shop doors. I've hated the olive garage door since BEFORE I owned the house. It's hideous. I had planned to install folding doors, but I may just keep this door. Either way I want to paint this either white or light grey like the porch base. I also need to fix the trim around the 2 doors.



Two problems here. For some unknown reason, my exterior plug isn't working anymore. I have no idea why, but it will need to be fixed. Then there is the window. This is not high on my list, but the wood frame around the cement (that holds in the window) is pretty badly rotted. There is always water splashing on this window (it's always dirty).



On the other window, I noticed that the chip-board (installed by a previous owner) is starting to rot and flake apart. It might be nice to close this off with brick or cement, or even metal flashing rather than wood. I was also told a few years ago that the black PVC pipes for the furnace are no longer up to code. They now need to be the white PVC, since apparently there's a chemical in the off-gassing that causes the black pipes to deteriorate.