Siding and a Fairy Garden

My original plan was to post on what was happening in the garden and then share a couple new Rhubarb recipes, however, our siding guys showed up yesterday and thought I would share on our on going leak problem.  Will post the garden and recipes next time :)

We have had a leak in the middle of our house since we bought it.  It only drips when we have wind AND rain.  A drizzly rain doesn't do it.  In the 12 years we have lived here, we had have had roofers check for problems,  windows replaced  and a previous siding company put new siding up 5 years ago in the area we thought was the problem.  Well, that siding looked like this until yesterday.  

 When we replaced the siding the first time, the leak still occurred.  We were not happy with the job they did as they had pieced siding together which we were trying to avoid as we were thinking that the rain that comes sideways in our 100mph winds could get underneath the siding in places...leading to the leak.  AND I was working at the time so didn't see them do the work.

So we had the 2 windows you see replaced.  Still leaked.  When the window guys came out, we had the same company send their siding guys and replaced another area of siding  that had been coated but still looked bad.  This picture is 2 years later and still looks fabulous.   This is the side of the house that gets much of the weather.

So we called the same people back a few months ago to check to see if their same 2 man siding crew was still with them and asked to have them come out and ONCE AGAIN replace the siding that now looked terrible.  Luckily, the 2 were still there!

This time Amelia and I had a picnic lunch out on the grass and watched the entertainment as they tore off the old siding.  

This is what was underneath:

A HOLE! AND only a couple scraps of vapor barrier! 

Basically, we threw our money out the window the first time we had this resided and most certainly (cross fingers 2x) was the leak culprit.

These guys did it right:

covered the hole...

added vapor barrier to the ENTIRE area...

and put up coated siding in full length boards.

then Amelia went out and took a few pics where she asked them to look at her :)

Let us hope there is no leak as our Alaska Fall is coming, bringing the wind and rain :)  Looks great and matches the other section perfectly.  They will be coating the opposite side of the house with Timberflex as that side doesn't see the wind as much and doing a bit of roofing so we can stall a bit longer on replacing the entire roof :) 

It's an 80's house and each year we will expect to do a bit of work until we have to start the process all over again. 

While the guys worked Amelia got bored watching them so she worked on her outside Fairy garden. 

We had stopped at the cutest antiquey store, Ozarks's,  to look at China Cabinets and found little fairy accessories (the fence and mushrooms) to use in our planned fairy garden for outside instead.  This is a bit under the deck and not been replaced as of yet and have left it for the weeds to grow as I didn't want to plant something that would only get ruined.  Fairy Gardens are perfect though!  Amelia looooved this store :)

 I actually liked this China Cabinet, but have seen similar on Craigslist cheaper in the past ... so opted to wait. 

Maybe next time I'll have a china cabinet too!