As promised we are doing a story on siding the house and spending next to nothing.
We are always looking at ways to do things , with out spending much money , and that pushes us to become even more creative. We love being creative and different ! Let me give you a little back ground. When we purchased our 2nd home, it was not livable. It needed gutted ! The main frame / structure, Furnace , central air unit and windows where good (the windows where new) every thing else had to be torn out and replaced, including celling's , walls, floors and the roof. The out side of the house was worn and tired. There used to be shutters on the house at one time ( some one must have recycled them-ha ha) but that's good, except it left
unpainted areas on the house and the bottom of the old siding was torn and battered. Though mostly solid , after repairing the bottom part. Still not pleasant to look at. We also have a garage that sits next to the house, we will be siding this also, and will share that as soon as it is done. Here is the siding on the front of the house , before we did any thing to it.
You can see where the shutters used to be.
The bottom of the siding, yuck !
Here (across) cover boards are up. We went over the old siding.
Here , adding the dark stained boards, in the opposite direction.
You can clearly see , above, we are wanting to down play the white of the windows buy using the dark boards to cover as much of them as we can. Why ? Nothing else is white, But they where new and we didn't want to paint them and risk having to paint over and over every so many years.
simple shutters, used to cover the sides of the white window frame.
Now that's a lot less white to look at.
These are what we put on the shutters. Just a little accent. They are old metal army tent stakes. They belonged to a dear friend of mine and I am so happy we were able to give them a new purpose. We just rubbed some of the board stain on them .
don't they look nice ?
We chose to wrap the boards at the door.
The neighbor's have been very curious. Driving back and fort in front of the house.
The verdict is in. The neighbor's stopped by, wanted to know where we got the wood and the ideal.
Guess that means they like it ! And so do we . See below the cost of this project, so far. After all, We do still have to change out the light fixture to better match and do the garage.
Here you can see the Before...
After...
So, here is what we did.
We used boards from our local sawmill, They were FREE. We bought some dark stain/ 3 cans, and 1box screws. Trim for under the eve/6 pc's. The tools ,we already had. Total cost so fare. A WHOPPING.... $ 78.00. YES, THATS RIGHT !
1 box screws $ 27.00
3 cans stain $ 21.00
6 pc's trim $ 30.00
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$ 78.00
Now, keep in mind you can run your boards any direction you like and this can be painted, left as is , stained, or clear coated.
Can not wait to start on the garage and hunt for that perfect light fixture. See you soon , T
Here , adding the dark stained boards, in the opposite direction.
The neighbor's have been very curious. Driving back and fort in front of the house.
For a year now, here in our house, we have been making a lot of our own Cleaning supplies , shampoo , conditioners, teeth whitening , hand soap , glass cleaner, shower cleaner. We started this as a trial. We wanted to see if in fact it was as easy as it seemed and of course, if it really worked. We learned a lot as we tried these recipes. Now we would like to share some with you. Each week we will be sharing a recipe that we have decided does work for us. These are tried and true, and the cost is very minimal compared to buying it and you know what is in it. These are simple recipes. We will start with the Laundry Washing Powders 
