Regarding colors, I’d go with what the people passing on the sidewalk have to say. They are actually seeing the house IRL, and we folks on here are just seeing pictures and using our imaginations.
As I said above, I favor a very pale, lemony yellow–IF you want a color. I think that would look nice on the horizontal siding, and be close enough to crisp white not to give a chopped up look. In one of your old links there was a pale yellow house that looked great with the local foliage, sun, etc, but I haven’t been able to find it.
Other than that, I’d stick with all white. I like white, and once the decks and planting are in, it will look even better.
When I originally suggested yellow, I was thinking of it for the body of the house, with the trim and horizontal siding all white. When I think about it, it really doesn’t make much sense to have just the horizontal siding a different color.
VeryHappy makes a good point.
Thanks for all the votes for white, it definitely makes my life easier! I think we’ll install new siding white. If it doesn’t look good then we can get out some big ladders and paint just the siding . wouldn’t be the first time I’ve asked the painters to repaint the house because I didn’t like the color after it got on the walls 
I’mvvery picky about color. Probably another reason that I cant make the same profit as my competitors!
bg, thanks for joining the flip vicariously group:)
PROGRESS UPDATE
The gas leak problem turned into a nightmare. It wasn’t that we were actually leaking gas, the issue was that we had disconnected the gas lines from the gas meter and we had a pressure gauge on the end of the line. We have to pump the lines up with 10 lbs of air and the gauge can’t move for a minimum of 20 minutes. Well, it was down to 5 lbs within 10 minutes, and as I said above, we just couldn’t find any leaks.
My lead carpenter spent two days under the house and all over the place soaping every joint and every pipe and there were no leaks. He argued that the work done by the original plumber was shoddy and we needed to tear out all the gas lines and start over. Do I listen to him??? NOOOOO, I decided to call a big name plumbing company and pay them to come out and find the leak. They come out on Wednesday and spend 2 hours soaping every join and pipe. $200 later (can you believe $100/hour???) they cannot find the leak. They convince me that I need to hire a ‘Leak Detection Company’ to come out with their sound machine to listen to all the lines.
So, against my better judgment, I hire the leak detection company at $250 to come out with some fancy sound machine where they listen at each joint and on the pipes. Of course, they cannot find anything!!! It was unbelievable that I would spend $500 and these supposed ‘experts’ cannot find the leak. I should have just trusted my employee to begin with, I trust him with everything else.
Needless to say, I just sat there stunned at how ridiculous this was at the end of the day on Wednesday. My lead went under the house and just started measuring everything he needed to tear out the fancy yellow flex line and install good old fashioned black steel gas pipe. He went to Home Depot the next morning and picked up $200 of gas line materials. By 1pm Thursday (about 4 hours of installation) the lines were done and he was filling the pressure gauge.
Pressure gauge held 10 lbs for all day!!! He did not even have to tighten one thing. He is my hero. I should have listened to him to begin with.
So, I paid about $400 for original plumber to install gas lines. He brought the yellow flex line, I did not ask for the flex line stuff. I was all excited. I already had to call the guy back once to tighten up because we had many leaks from pressure gauge. He kept insisting the leaks were in the black pipe connected to his work going to the HVAC - we knew it wasn’t true. Then I called him to come fix the final situation and he is not available.
Then about $100 for my guy to spend hours under there trying to find the leak. Then $450 for two other companies to try to find leak. And in the end, another $350 for total new installation.
Do you think I should have just paid my guy $350 to install all the gas lines in the beginning??? What an idiot I am. I hired the other plumber because I thought we could move the project along faster if he did the plumbing. My lesson learned is that there isn’t anyone on earth worth calling to do plumbing - my guy can do it better and safer.
So we finally get the gas line working and now the tankless water heater won’t stay lit and heat up water. It ignites but then the total gas heating doesn’t turn on and heat the water. Another two hours together trying to trouble shoot the tankless water heater (which original plumber installed!!). We cannot figure out what is going wrong.
Drywall installation is underway. I loaded some pictures. The drywall guy pulled a fast one on me. Original guy that is highly recommended comes into project and walks around and does an estimate. His estimate was very good so I hired him and begged him to start right away. Instead, his ‘brother in law’ shows up and walks around and starts having a fit. This is not a normal easy drywall job, there aren’t blank new construction walls just waiting for drywall. There is a lot of different sizes and types of drywall that have to be installed. And, there is a lot of detail ‘tying in’ to the original thick plaster in some areas. Very detailed work.
So, this guy starts calling the original guy complaining about everything and getting upset about the bid. He thinks I don’t understand Spanish. He then tells us he cannot start that day because ‘we aren’t ready’, we haven’t completely passed insulation inspection.
Brother shows up next day by himself with excuses why he doesn’t have a team. How are you going to hang drywall by yourself? It just doesn’t work, you need two guys for the big sheets. He then proceeds to get about 3 1/2 pcs of drywall into the closet in one full day, it is really obvious that this guy does not know how to do drywall. It was ridiculous!!! I just bit my tongue because it is a fixed price bid.
Finally the Brother shows up the next day with more guys. They know what they are doing and we start moving along, but it is still taking forever, much longer than normal. Meanwhile, I keep trying to give them a progress payment, but they say I need to pay the original guy who came to do the estimate (the one who really does drywall), but he has never shown up. And, they are spending all day whining and complaining to my lead carpenter about the huge mistake their brother made on the bid and it’s much harder than they thought.
Hey, join the real world!! Everything’s much harder than you thought. If it was just a bunch of straight walls we would have just hung some drywall ourselves
Arrg!!! To quote my dad who used to say this all the time “good help is hard to find” and “if you want it done right do it yourself”
Sorry for the subs letting you down.
I have some new photos loaded of our drywall and other things to the Flickr group
Congrats on your progress. Glad your gas lines are now working properly. Sheesh! The buyers are sure lucky you’re so conscientious!
Your lead is worth his weight in gold.
FWIW, the guys around here do not want to use the flexi stuff for running gas lines. Sounds like they are right!
That drywall job looks like a nightmare. Reminds of my first–and after that I vowed ONLY–drywall job, at our first house. We renovated an old, ramshackle little house, a cottage, really, where nothing was plumb or square, nothing was on a 16 in center, and there were few places where the drywall could be installed so that the mitred edges met. It was just unbelievably difficult. Then there was the fact that we tried to minimize seams by using 12 ft pieces on the ceiling…can you say heavy??? Oy. When people said “Oh, you must have gotten so much satisfaction from doing it yourself!” I’d say, “No, I would have gotten a lot more satisfaction from just writing a check!”
Just curious, Coralbrook. Why is this drywall job so difficult? Doesn’t seem to be on the surface …
The original house is lath and plaster. It appears to have one sheet of something on the back and then chicken wire and a full coat of plaster which is like concrete. Wherever only a portion of the wall was taken out the new drywall has to be shimmed and leveled and ‘pieced’ onto the wall to be even with the original plaster. In some areas the plaster is so thick - between 5/8" and 7/8" thick. This means you have to analyze it very carefully and determine how much you have to shim it out and what size drywall to use. they have been whining so much that my lead carpenter has to go through the house and make little custom wood shims and install them to help them level the drywall.
In the new wall areas of the house it is also complicated. In the back room the Structural Engineer and the City require a ‘fire rated wall and ceiling’. The plans actually called for two layers of 5/8" drywall on the ceilings. And, to make it even harder, I created a semi-vaulted ceiling in the back room that requires special corners (see picture). My lead carpenter had to put in a lot of blocking in those little corners so that the drywall could be screwed in. The drywallers were having a fit about applying two sheets of extremely heavy drywall to the ceiling (even though I made it very clear when they came to do the estimate). So, I had a talk with the City Inspector when he came for another inspection and he was very nice and said it was extreme overkill. He told me we could put one sheet of fire code 5/8" on the ceiling. A small victory!!
Then, in other areas, anywhere that there is a plywood shear wall (and there are lots of them), the plywood itself is 3/8" thick. So, I have asked that they only put 1/4" drywall on those areas of the house. Then they have to try to match up the remainder of the wall to the 5/8" total that the plywood + drywall creates.
Oh, and of course, they are having a fit about trying to drywall the little niche in the hallway and the curved arches in the living room and dining room areas where we opened up the walls.
So, it’s a combination of a lot of tying in to existing plaster walls and the complexity of which size drywall goes where - even though I have drawn a diagram for them AND written the size on each wall with Sharpie for them.
Oh, and another thing they keep crying about. All of my drywall was delivered three months ago before the permit nightmare began. We were about to go to town installing drywall. The delivery was about 40 sheets of 1/2" drywall, some 1/4" drywall and green board for the bathrooms. Of course Home Depot put the green board and the 1/4" drywall at the bottom of this huge pile. The pile has been out in the elements and rain, covered up as best we could. Some of it got wet and damaged on the top.
But, since the entire wall structure of the house got changed by the structural engineer - lots of plywood shear walls - we need a lot more 1/4" drywall than the 1/2" regular drywall. They keep telling me that they are out of 1/4" drywall and I need to go to Home Depot. I keep telling them that it is at the bottom of the pile, they need to focus on working with the 1/2" drywall first to get to the bottom of the pile. They refuse to unstack the pile to get to the 1/4". They were whining so much about it, that once again, my lead goes out and just pulls apart the huge pile himself so they can get to the 1/4".
Evidently they do most of this complaining to him when I am not around and he is just sick of it.
Still trying to finish drywall. These guys are beyond whining and complaining today, but they are staying late tonight until they get it ready for inspection tomorrow.
My lead woke up in the middle of the night and realized that Mr. Big Dog plumbing probably installed the hot and cold water lines backwards into the tankless water heater. So, this morning he tested flushing the toilet a lot and guess what… steaming hot water coming into the toilet tank:) So, he got under the house and traced the lines - yep! that’s the issue. So, off to Home Depot I go for more copper plumbing parts so he can crawl under the house and cross the lines up to the tankless water heater. After that, we have hot water coming out of the shower where it is supposed to be!
Then the HVAC guy comes to finish installing all the ducting for the heater. Find out Mr. Big Dog plumbing ran the kitchen sink drain line right across where the heating vent is in the kitchen floor (I’ve got toasty toe kick heating right at the kitchen sink) - which was there long before that guy installed the plumbing. My lead has to get under there and cut out all the ABS drain lines and re-run the drain around from the ducting coming up to the vent. More rework! In the end, we have had to completely tear out this guy’s gas lines, cut open and re-route his ABS drain lines, re-route the hot/cold water to the tankless water heater, fix a bunch of leaks found in the copper lines and sand/clean every copper line. He left so much flux all over the copper lines and flux is a corrosive material and (after many many years) would have corroded the exposed lines under the house.
Today I was able to bring several samples of different types of bead board, ship lap siding and other wood paneling to determine what I would like to do in the front entry area and the kitchen ceiling.
Also, I put up a lot of new colors painted on the exterior siding to see if there was anything I liked.
My agent came over and we made some good decisions… detailed bead board in the front entry way as a wainscot with thick wood trim. Simple wood v groove paneling on the kitchen ceiling - the bead board was too busy on the ceiling. I also tried full thick wood tongue and groove that I’ve seen in some pictures, but it looked too ‘country’ in the house.
After much agony, we both agreed there really needs to be some ‘color’ on the outside of the house. I took a picture of the swatches, but it’s hard to see the true coloring in the pictures loaded to Flickr. There is a deep blue/green on the right that my agent is in love with. I think it is a little too ‘bright’ and needs to be toned down a bit. I think I may have found the perfect color, but I only have a small swatch stapled up at this point.
Maybe I’ve watched too much Judge Judy, but can’t you take Mr. Big Dog Plumber to small claims court to reclaim your loss? Maybe just the threat will make him consider a refund?
Oh my! What a disaster that fancy plumber turned out to be! Who would have thought! Maybe you should send him a bill… The dude is supposed to be licensed, bonded, and insured, right?
I called last week when we had the gas line issues. His son answered the phone and said his Dad was ‘in the hospital’. Not wanting to be a jerk, I just tried to see if the son or someone else could come fix the issues. The son said he was not ‘certified’ in the flex line plumbing. Then the son tried to tell me 'if anyone messes with my Dad’s plumbing, then his warranty is void". I asked him “What would you like me to do, I have to pass inspection”. He didn’t have an answer.
Then I called back and left a message regarding how no one could find the leaks and we had to pull out all the gas lines and replace them. Never heard back. Haven’t even bothered calling with all the new issues.
I just didn’t want to push the issue because I didn’t know what ‘in the hospital’ meant. I think the guy has serious alcoholism problems. There is no way that he is going to issue a refund. Even if he ‘got out of the hospital’, there would be a huge amount of finger pointing going on.
cb, you have handled so many setbacks in stride. Mr. Big Dog Plumbing would have sent me over the edge with such extensive incompetence. If Karma is watching, you deserve to find a property that just needs your magic touch and vision next - no “narc” neighbors, no special surprises, etc. Remember when we were talking lighting back in November and you said the sale fixture that you liked wouldn’t become available until February? Seemed like that made an instant elimination at the time, but now it would be just right. So hoping you are sailing smoothly after the plumbing inspection.
Just went to the photos and I’m with your agent. I love the blue/green. I think some color on the siding and some landscaping at the base will make a dramatic change. But that’s just me…