It’s amazing the things you learn and start to notice when you’re renovating an old, wooden home. Take skirting for example, which is designed to keep animals (or as our next-door neighbor says, “critters”) out from under the crawl space of the house. It can be synthetic, or it can be wood. It can be framed, or it can be screwed into the side of the house. There are many ways to do it. Here's what it looked like before:
Aric decided he liked the look of framed, wooden lattice. I made the argument that he used on me for the vinyl fence and the composite deck: wood doesn’t last as long, and there’s a lot more maintenance involved. He was convinced to go with PVC framing and lattice. For a higher-end look, we went with the smaller holes.
Aric researched on YouTube what we needed and how to do this project.
Throughout 2020, Aric has been amassing quite a collection of tools, particularly battery-powered power tools. Of course, he needed yet another one for this job – a nail gun. The nail gun and the materials were $1,000. I keep hearing he almost has a complete collection of tools, but our Lowe’s receipts constantly indicate otherwise. But I really can’t complain. It’s not like I’m handy.
It took the two of us two very full days to complete this mini project. It involved a lot of measuring and problem-solving. We had to work around pipes and conduit. We had to dig out some dirt and shell. We had to use blocks in some areas where the concrete footers stuck out. Aric did a lot of sawing. I did a lot of nailing.
Finally, we were able to problem-solve our way to a house fully skirted with white lattice. It looks really good. I was skeptical this was something that would be worth the time and effort, but Aric was right. The lattice skirting really put a nice finishing touch on the house.
