About a year ago, our Home Owner's Association sent us a letter stating that our home needed to be repainted within the next ninety days. Ironically, when Brad and I received the letter, we were already in the process of weighing the pros and cons of just having the house repainted or doing what really needed to be done, which was to have the entire house resided with Hardie Plank. At the time, I knew very little about Hardie Plank or siding in general, but Brad and I both knew that our siding was in terrible shape. It was warped and pulling away from the house in some places, not to mention the fact that neither of us liked the color of our house very much. After doing a little research, we decided that residing was definitely the way to go and Hardie Plank was definitely the product we wanted to use because it is guaranteed for life. We also decided to have new front and back doors installed, because both were in really bad shape. So, we got a rough estimate of how much the residing would cost, set a goal to save that amount, and wrote a letter to the HOA requesting an extension. We were granted the extension and given one year to complete the project.
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| Before the residing project. You can't tell in this picture, but the siding was in really bad shape! |
In November, Brad and I were ecstatic because we were very close to reaching our goal of saving the money necessary to reside. Once we realized that, we decided to get the ball rolling on the project by having it approved through the HOA. In our neighborhood, anything that you do to the exterior of your home has to be approved by the HOA first. The submission process is pretty specific. You have to submit exact samples and descriptions of any changes you plan to make to your home. Before we could submit our application, we wanted to get a better price quote of exactly how much everything would cost, so we went to Home Depot. Ordinarily, I LOVE Home Depot! In fact, the fine folks at the Depot have helped us out with lots of home repair and renovation projects in the past. How does that slogan go again? "You can do it! We can help!" Well, in this case, we found out that Home Depot could not help us, or rather, they could help us for double, yes literally double, the original rough estimate we received the year before. Brad and I both felt utterly deflated after Bill from Home Depot presented us with his price quote on our project. We decided to get one more price quote before throwing in the towel and just having some paint slapped on the exterior to temporarily remedy the problem. We called Scott Hoffman from Home Wizards to give us a second quote. Scott and his crew painted the downstairs interior of our house last year and they did a fantastic job. They were even great about doing touch-up, so we knew that there work was exceptional. Thankfully, Scott's quote came in just a little over the original rough estimate we received! We submitted our application for approval and held our breath. The approval finally came in early January and Scott scheduled our project for Monday, January 10th. Well, those of you who live in Atlanta are well aware of what happened on January 10th. That is the day that pretty much the entire city shut down due to snow and the snow didn't clear out for about a week. Our project was postponed for a little longer, but the Home Wizards crew was finally able to get everything underway on Monday, January 17th, one week later.
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| Let the renovations begin! |
Brad and I were so thrilled that the project was finally getting started. Everything was going well, although noisy, until we realized that, due to some unknown phenomenon, the crew that was replacing the siding on the exterior of the house, was simultaneously making quarter-sized holes in the sheet rock on the interior walls of our house. We ended up with roughly forty holes spread throughout our entire home. The only room that did not have holes in the sheet rock was our kitchen, which does not have an exterior wall. Brad was a little discouraged when he discovered the first few holes, but when we realized exactly how many holes there were, I was hysterical, I mean Academy Award winning hysterics here! I was seriously an emotional wreck! When I thought about the fact that we'd spent the last two years painting the upstairs of our home ourselves and paying a crew to paint the downstairs, just to have it all undone in two days was really more than my eight month pregnant self could handle. Now, in retrospect, of course I realize that we are insanely lucky to have a roof over our heads, much less, to be able to renovate and redecorate. However, in the moment, I was absolutely inconsolable!
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| Two of the forty holes in the walls of our house |
At first, when there were only about eight holes in the walls on one side of our house, Brad wanted to just repair them himself and not mention anything to the crew. But, once we realized that these holes were in just about every room, I was adamant about having Home Wizards take care of the repairs. Brad called Scott to fill him in on what was going on. He came out to take a look at the holes and promised to fix them all, even if it meant repainting every wall. Once the residing crew was finished with the installation, the painting crew came out to start working on painting the exterior, filling the holes, and painting the interior.
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| Repairing the holes |
Because the weather conditions were not working in our favor, it took a couple of days before the crew was able to finish everything and we ended up spending one night at the Holiday Inn. In the end, Home Wizards made good on all of their promises, because the interior and the exterior both look fantastic. Our new back door was installed and painted yesterday and now we are just awaiting approval on our front door. Once we receive approval for the front door, Home Wizards will come back out to install it and then we can finally call it day on this project that has been a year in the making. Even with all of the drama, we are thrilled with the end results and we are absolutely certain that we made the right decision!
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| A job well done! |
