Replacing damaged weatherboards

There are some damaged weatherboards in our porch area that are being replaced.

I assumed that the entire length of the weatherboard would be replaced, but no, the joiner is able to just cut out the damaged part, and insert a new part.

I made that sound easy... it's a bit more complicated than that!

First of all, finding matching weatherboards is challenging. Not just getting the right size (as mentioned previously, there are lots of different sizes of rusticated weatherboards). But getting the same depth/contour of the scalloped bit.

The joiner went to 3 different salvage/reclamation yards before finding anything similar.

And even then he had to shave 2mm off the scalloped bit to make it consistent with what's already on our house.

Above: the new weatherboard pieces from the reclamation yard have been screwed into place.

After screwing the new weatherboard pieces into place, the joiner then applied filler to make them look smooth and consistent.

After: Taking this "after" photo was surprisingly difficult, as I couldn't actually spot the joins! Nice workmanship :)

The weatherboards are now undercoated, so that they're ready to be painted.

But there's a bit more work to be done on our porch, bay front and stairs before the painters come.

Above: this is what the wall looks like, minus weatherboards. There's some kind of sacking material between the wood and what's probably the gib board.

Why choosing Resene paint colours has been a frustrating experience

I've mentioned previously that choosing colours for our villa has been more difficult than anticipated - and also a lot less fun than I thought it'd be.

Why?
Numerous reasons!

• Light colours look a lot darker in reality than they do on the paint charts.
• Dark colours look a lot lighter in reality than they do on the paint charts.
• Some paint colours don't even resemble their colour swatch. (We thought we'd found the perfect swatch colour - "Iron" - a neutral tone. In reality, it was very blue... Resene staff agreed that the real colour doesn't match the colour swatch.)
• I got a bit stuck after "Iron" not being the colour we wanted. Thankfully the helpful staff at Resene Wairau Park suggested an alternative - "Half Surrender"... I would never have discovered this colour by myself, because it isn't even on a paint chart!!
• Some of the test pots I bought were half empty and had obviously been already used. They were nonetheless sold at full price. But it's not worth driving across town to complain about a $4 test pot!

Above: a test pot of "Licorice" I bought at full price, but it was half empty (and with paint around the screw top) when I got it home.

In total I bought approx. 17 test pots to choose 2 colours. Thankfully I'd been coupon-clipping for a while (look on the back of supermarket till receipts for "Buy 2 get 1 free" test pot offers from Resene), so that helped the finances a bit.

Above: test pot madness! All this to choose 2 colours ;)

I guess if I didn't care so much about the colour, or if I were better at choosing colours, the exercise would have been a lot simpler. But both Mr Kiwi and I are quite specific about what we like, hence the prolonged exercise!

Oh, and I downloaded the 2 (free) Resene iPhone apps during the process too. Save yourself the time, they're not very helpful. One didn't even work and just gave me error messages!

My favourite Resene store: Wairau Park. The friendly staff there helped us choose both the colours for our villa.

Other Resene stores worthy of a mention: Birkenhead, for being the only store to suggest I get a Free Resene Card (which gives you discounts and other goodies). And Ponsonby, for being the only stores to have the free "Create Your Own Colour Scheme" Sheets with a villa on them.

Least favourite Resene store: Takapuna - the young guy there just didn't want to know or didn't want to help. (He was so rude/abrupt to the guy in front of me it was embarrassing just being in the store!)

The new front steps

The joiner installed the steps yesterday.

The next job is for him to make the surrounds - and while he's here, he's going to do other jobs to tidy up the front entrance.

The steps have been undercoated to help protect them from the rain that's due this weekend.



Above: our new front steps!

Scribers: Part 2 - The Solution

In my previous post I outlined the challenge with scribers - or rather, the lack of scribers.

Our joiner is making scribers to fill these gaps.

A scriber is a long, vertical piece of wood shaped to fit:

Above: A new scriber has been inserted to fill the gap between the vertical wooden post and the weatherboards on the bay front of our villa.

Of course, there is still a tiny tiny gap between the scriber and the weatherboards - making something that fits within fractions of a millimetre isn't possible!

Apparently this will be filled with a product called "No More Gaps" before it's painted.

A quality finish

The joiner's doing an outstanding job of providing a quality finish. He's added a lip to the scriber, which matches the lip on the window frames.

To show the difference, here's the "before" photo, with plain vertical posts:

And here's the "after" photo with the new scribers, complete with lip:

Making and fitting a scriber of this quality isn't a quick job: it's taken the joiner the best part of the day to make one scriber. And the photo above has two scribers in it, so it's going to take a while for him to finish the job I reckon!

The quicker solution

The quicker (and probably cheaper) solution would be to just insert lots of little plugs into each of the gaps.

The pic below from the Bungalow & Villa catalogue shows the plug that they stock for this.

Above: Rusticated weatherboards plus a rusticated weatherboard plug - from Bungalow & Villa.

Image Credit: Bungalow and Villa.

When I was browsing the Bungalow & Villa catalogue, I learnt that the weatherboards on our house are called "Rusticated Weatherboards". I'd been calling them "scalloped"... oops, wrong!

Other styles of weatherboard include "Bevelback" and "Shiplap".

You learn something new every day huh! Especially when you're renovating an old house :)

Scribers: Part 1 - The Problem

I had noooo idea what scribers were till about a week ago.

Let me show you...

Below: See the gap between the wooden frame and the weatherboards? Well, there shouldn't be a gap.
It should look like the pic below:


Much neater, huh!

That's because the long, vertical piece of wood connecting with the weatherboards is a scriber. It's shaped to fit the weatherboards.

To improvise, instead of using scribers, a previous owner of our house filled some of the gaps (very roughly) with filler... it looks terrible:


Some (or maybe even all) of these gaps are going to be addressed with the work that's going on at the front of our house at present.

Read Part 2 on Scribers here.

Painting the fretwork

Mr Kiwi is doing a fab job of painting the fretwork I bought the other day.

It's a mighty fiddly job, but Mr Kiwi is using his kiwi ingenuity, as the pic belows shows.

He's used 2 nails to support each piece - and has been letting them dry like that.

Each piece of fretwork is getting 2 coats of interrior/exterior undercoat, and then an enamel top coat.

Above: Two nails are used to support each piece of fretwork as it gets painted.

Adding new villa fretwork

Our villa was built in quite a plain style - it doesn't have the fancy fretwork that many other houses of this era possess.

So while we're sprucing up the front, we're going to add a few bits and pieces to give it a bit more character, and make it look more "villa-ey". It should give our house a bit more street appeal.

Above: The exterior of our villa is quite plain at present.

I did a good amount of research as to what I wanted; a bit of the research was online, but most of it was done by walking round the area with Mr Kiwi (and our dog) to see what we liked and didn't like.

We decided that we wanted to add a little bit of character, but not go overboard: we don't want the house looking too twee and frilly.

As the builders are now hard at work, I made haste to Bungalow and Villa in Morningside.

Even though they sell everything online now, I wanted to see the items for real before purchasing.

I was expecting a small shop, but it turned out to be huge showroom and workshop! They have just about everything you need for renovating a period home.

I bought:

• Large brackets x 4 (for the bay front)
• Teardrops x 2 (for the bay front)
• Small brackets x 2 (to go above the doorway)
• Finials x 2 (1 for the bay front; 1 for the garage)

These all come in treated paint quality pine, so our next job is to undercoat them and paint them in white enamel.

Above: The fretwork I purchased from Bungalow & Villa now needs to be undercoated and painted.

When I brought these home and showed Mr Kiwi, he exclaimed "wow, our house is actually going to look like a villa!"

Yesss! I can't wait to see what these will look like when installed onto the front of our house!

Project cost: $$ (materials only)