The unregarded east side

I finished up the north gable end yesterday and we swung around to begin work on the east wall. That’s The Wandering Monk above, with his magical Honda pressure washer. They cleaned decades of grime off the siding and incidentally revealed bad seals at the top of two windows. Really bad seals, in one case.

One window merely dribbled harmlessly under the force of the washer. The other admitted what seemed half the aquatic blast into my living room, drenching a desk, paperwork, and electronics. That was … interesting. OTOH, this is a good moment to learn about things that need fixing, so I’m glad it happened. FWIW, neither of those windows was leaking under normal weather conditions.

I’m not particularly glad to be working on this portion of the project. The east wall is doomed to unloveliness. Every other side of the house looks interesting and has something of interest to look upon. The prospect in every direction says “country” or “park.”

The east wall, though, faces onto a narrow strip, a fence, and the too-near side of a neighbor’s house. It inevitably shows every bit of clumsy planning and poor execution Jim Beam and Jack Daniel ever perpetrated. We can work on it all week (and will, because it presents dozens of thorny technical problems) and nothing gratifying will emerge.

I’m fairly sure the neighbor, who keeps a tidy house and yard, will be relieved no longer to gaze upon sights like this:*

But my little homeowner’s heart will not sing. I’ll be relieved to have this side skirted, sealed up, painted, and properly trimmed. But I won’t love it. I especially won’t love that this long, unlovely wall will eat up more than its share of the summer’s project budget.

But. By week’s end it should be done, or nearly so, and we can move on to more gratifying (and simpler) exterior finishing. Projects are on schedule and not too horrendously beyond budget. And that alone is always good news.

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* Oddly enough, the window in that second photo with the hacked up siding and complete lack of trim is the only one on the east wall that didn’t leak. But then, that’s the one the Monk and I installed last year and that I caulked the dickens out of. It just didn’t get trimmed back then because … technical problems. Which the Monk will manage to solve now.