This project began fairly innocently. There were aluminum awnings on all the windows and we left them alone for the first year, but by the summer of 2008, we were a bit over them. So, I got out my stepladder and cordless drill and began removing them. Of course, upon doing so, I couldn’t help noticing the aluminum-wrapped trim was not properly caulked and shortly discovered what I expected/dreaded discovering. The trim behind the aluminum had once been quite nice and now was very rotted. Once water was able to get behind that aluminum and get trapped there, I am sure it rotted quite quickly. Oh yeah, and upon removing the old trim I noticed the mortar had completely gone from the middle joint of the sill and had to remove, clean-out, remortar and replace the sill. Which weighed like 95 lbs. By myself.
So, here we go. I removed all the aluminum and discovered that, were a complete restoration to take place, it was going to involve me custom-making the fluted verticals with a router. And ripping the appropriate angles on the edge of each, etc. Who can resist such a challenge? Certainly not I. Luckily, bro-in-law Derek was visiting, so we put him to work helping Dawn paint once I had finished making and installing all the woodwork. Then, a couple weeks later, I hired a crew to install a copper roof to replace the aging and deteriorating painted, galvinized metal roof. Et voila!
