Window Sills and Rotted Siding

Make no mistake: I absolutely love the Roediger House. It is a fantastic place to call home and, as time passes and more of the needed projects get checked off, the more awesome this dwelling becomes. This past Sunday morning, in the quiet of a city summer weekend morning, I was outside while Sumner ran around checking all his usual squirrel and chipmunk spots for activity, and I reveled in the tremendous good fortune of where I get to live. Of course there's much more on the to-do list, including exterior mildew removal and a fresh new paint job, plus all the summer landscaping I've not yet gotten around to.

One thing that definitely increased the livability of the Roediger House was the huge renovation and addition project of 2008-2009, with Peter R. "Pete" LaRoque of Mocksville, NC, as general contractor. After he and his crew were done, I had a spanking new gorgeous kitchen, four great new bathrooms plus a new powder room, a laundry room, and a rebuilt butler's pantry with all the original cabinetry put right back into place. (Exterior painting, a full new HVAC system, and a new roof were also all part of Pete's work.)

As I've said before, I thought Pete was great for 90 percent of the job, but his excellence waned as we got to the end of that massive project. I ended up mostly unable to pull him back to correct problems that emerged in the months following the completion of the punchlist. It's also disappointing to see problems surface all these years later that were the result of some shoddy attention to detail. (One of those recently emerged when the new shower doors were being installed.)

Pool Table area in attic - rotted window stool
(replaced by Kenny in November 2016)

Well, during Independence Day week, Kenny and Jake Schrader of Kenny's Carpentry were here tackling some of those issues, which included rotted window sills/stools on the new part of the house! I reckon Pete used untreated wood that was not properly primed and then was cheaply painted...and here we are only about eight years later and I've had Kenny replace two large ones and one small one (and he also took care of a rotting original house window stool, outside the dining room).

Dining Room Window

The guys also have been spot-replacing some of the original clapboard siding that has rotted over time: