Sunday, August 29, 2010

All Wrapped up

So, we got a quote for siding. It wasn't outrageous but it didn't seem like they would do the job to the level we wanted it done. Their proposed solution around the window was J-mold and with no mention of building wrap.

When we installed the kitchen window, we caulked around it but it was basically sitting there with caulk around it and a piece of plywood below it. Given that water can pass onto the underside of the siding we wanted to ensure that the edge around the window was really weather tight. By this point we realized that if we wanted this job done how we wanted it it was probably just easier to do it ourselves. So this weekend we prepped the kitchen for siding, we flashed around the window (using a home made bending solution):

Filled in the gaps around the door and added brick mold
and of course wrapped everything in building wrap. Hopefully we will get to side it this week/weekend and then we can move on to the deck!

In other news we used the money we saved on hiring out siding to hire our contractor neighbor to arrange and install a custom size door from the Habitat for Humanity Re-store in the basement walkup. Things are moving along again!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh please tell me more about the basement door. We have a door that we need to make fit on the garage and when we get a new front door we want to move the current one to the back. All the openings are different sizes. Did you have to deal with this issue?

techhandyman said...

Hi Maggie. Our basement door opening was exactly 30". Unfortunately most doors are 30"+jams and if I recall correctly the minimum legal exterior door width is 32" so not only are we somewhere between 30" and 28" we're smaller than what stores normally carry. Our neighbor let us know about Habitat for Humanity's Restore which makes custom width flat panel steel clad exterior doors. Nothing fancy, but reasonaly affordable (we had a quote of about $1000 from the company that did our windows for the basement door). Aside from this we did a completely new build door that we installed ourself in the kitchen and we're leaving the main door alone. In our experience installing doors is a big pain in the butt. If you can find someone to do it for cheap it's *very* worth paying for.