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We have a contractor that we occasionally use who is from Romania which means his use of the English language is occasionally creative. Once when at the house he looked at a little bump out repair and proclaimed, "it scratches my eyes, it has to go!" Needless to say this comment - 'it scratches my eyes' quickly entered the Smit lexicon to describe something that just doesn't look right - or just isn't right.
This year has been for us the year of the exterior of the house - new privacy screen on the deck, new railing on the deck, new front stoop and railing, new driveway, work in the garden, stucco repair and finally this week the house gets painted. In preparation, I have been, the last two days, repairing the siding on the house. two old dryer ducts had to go - that sort of thing. Fortunately when we installed french doors a couple of years ago, I saved some scraps of siding from the new opening and was able to glue them over the existing siding to camouflage the holes.
That said on one side we had had a guy repair some spots with aluminum when they did our soffit and eaves (not my Romanian guy!). The colour didn't match but, we are getting the house painted, so, no big deal.
Hence tonights rant, the aluminum repairs had scratched my eyes every time I looked at them - and not just because they were a different colour. I tried my hardest to leave them be - knowing that the house is 80 years old and never going to be perfect. Well, I finally couldn't bear it, pulled off the patches only to find that every single one (four) had been done wrong. One was the wrong size ( a corner piece that had to match the line) and the other three, he hadn't bothered to level out the repair underneath so, none of the ever could lay flat or straight. So, four for four with proper repairs now - and me wondering while there's always time to do it again but never time to do it right the first time.
Argh! rant over
Oh, and, I bought a blade for my chop saw for aluminum - for the railings, and for the siding. The arrows for rotation were in the wrong direction - weird.
This year has been for us the year of the exterior of the house - new privacy screen on the deck, new railing on the deck, new front stoop and railing, new driveway, work in the garden, stucco repair and finally this week the house gets painted. In preparation, I have been, the last two days, repairing the siding on the house. two old dryer ducts had to go - that sort of thing. Fortunately when we installed french doors a couple of years ago, I saved some scraps of siding from the new opening and was able to glue them over the existing siding to camouflage the holes.
That said on one side we had had a guy repair some spots with aluminum when they did our soffit and eaves (not my Romanian guy!). The colour didn't match but, we are getting the house painted, so, no big deal.
Hence tonights rant, the aluminum repairs had scratched my eyes every time I looked at them - and not just because they were a different colour. I tried my hardest to leave them be - knowing that the house is 80 years old and never going to be perfect. Well, I finally couldn't bear it, pulled off the patches only to find that every single one (four) had been done wrong. One was the wrong size ( a corner piece that had to match the line) and the other three, he hadn't bothered to level out the repair underneath so, none of the ever could lay flat or straight. So, four for four with proper repairs now - and me wondering while there's always time to do it again but never time to do it right the first time.
Argh! rant over
Oh, and, I bought a blade for my chop saw for aluminum - for the railings, and for the siding. The arrows for rotation were in the wrong direction - weird.