The south side. Some people hear that and think of big cities like Chicago. In this case, we are talking about the south-facing side of our 1902 Queen Anne Victorian.
The south side of our home has had some issues. A
floating corner that was having a hard time staying afloat. A
leaky roof. A dilapidated
porch. A weird fire escape??
A while back, our home was a multi-family home, and the second and third floors were used as a boarding house. We're not sure what the municipal code required, but we can only assume that it was during this time that a fire escape was added off the third floor. It was certainly an ugly thing.
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| The fire escape is visible in the upper left. |
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| Another view of the fire escape. |
When Karstin and Alex finished up on the north and east sides of the house, they moved on to the south. They were able to get two days' work done before this happened:
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| Spring in Wisconsin. Go figure. |
We had to wait a bit for the snow to melt and for the ground to dry up a little bit, and the scraping was underway!
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| Notice how the fire escape is gone. Yay! |
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| Down to the bare wood. |
Alex commented that the paint came off really easily on this side of the house, compared to the north and east sides. We're thinking it may have had something to do with how the sun always beats down on this side of the house.
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| Ready for primer. |
Now that the south side was completely scraped and prepped, Karstin and Alex could put some primer on. They decided that some of the primer would be tinted gray, so the darker colors of paint wouldn't need two coats.
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| Primer's all done. Now to get some color on there. |
Check back for updates when the paint gets applied!
