Click here to view the embedded video.

When I first started in the remodeling industry I was about 15 and I was looking for a summer job,  I found a gig installing aluminum soffit  to the eaves of a home in Odessa Tx.and by installing soffit I mean falling of ladders with such grace as to make an Olympic high diver jealous. At that time I was told to use a hammer and nails to fasten the soffit to the eaves, this meant that after every graceful decent off the ladder I had to pick up hundreds of nails from grass, and by grass I mean working  thru the inevitable piles of dog poop, anyway, apparently the company I was working for did not believe in power tools as this would be far to convenient, either that or they were afraid to let me near them. later that summer I worked for a different company in the same industry who used power drills (and allowed me to use them) to install siding, now when I say power drill I mean the kind with an extension cord that constantly got tangled in ladders and bushes, and the concept of drill brakes (this is when the drill stops turning the moment you let go of the trigger) had not yet entered the sphere of thinking in our crew, at that time you had to get really good at timming the release of the trigger so the screw would make it all the way into the wood without stripping. Sometime after that we got into “cordless power drills” (hallelujah) Thats right, I heard a chorus of angels singing in my head, this is what started my love of power tools, no more tangled cords, and better yet, no more nailing upside down(don’t ask). The next BIG upgrade in power tools in my opinion was the Impact Drill, this made installing big screws much easier, it was like going from black and white tv to color tv, now I’m not saying that as a child we didn’t have a color tv, we did, but the audio was the only thing that worked on it but fear not! we had a black and white tv that had no audio, so the only logical conclusion was to put the BW tv on top of the color tv then we had to turn both tv’s to one of the three available channels and thereby we could watch Scooby Doo.

OK, way off track I know, I’m told I have AD….Oh look a quarter! OK, back on track, I have used many brands of power drills over the years, I used to be a die hard dewalt fan for many years until there batteries started to, how shall I put this…SUCK! I then switched to Makita which I was told had better batteries which they did, so I switched over all my power tools to Makita. Well as time goes by my Makita batteries started to loose power and I may have lost one or two along the way, and not wanting to switch my entire set again,  I went Home Depot to buy 2 new 18 volt batteries, well it turns out that power tool batteries are expensive,  really EXPENSIVE  like $100 each, so being properly stingy I got on my iPhone and tried to find cheaper batteries online but at the time I found none so I looked around the store and this is what I found, a brand new (duh) 18v impact drill with 2 batteries and a charger for $215, so for an extra $15 I got an new charger, impact drill and 2 new batteries, so to wrap up this insane rambling into a somewhat coherent “Tool Tip” sometimes you’ll be better off  buying a new kit vs tying to buy just new batteries.

Abram

1. Insulation- if your home is as old as the one in this video, and was probably built during the Great Depression, it may not have any insulation in the walls, they did this back then because times were tough and they could not afford luxuries like insulation. So consider blowing insulation into the empty walls before you cover the walls, that is exactly what we did on this home.

2. Wood- Replace the rotten wood (duh) it may be tempting to save time and money by cutting corners and thinking, no one is gonna know, after all you will be covering the walls, but remember you need a solid base to fasten the siding to, after all we live in the Texas panhandle that has been known to occasionally get a bit breezy and you don’t want your new siding to blow off next week.

3. Siding- there are many types and styles of siding from steel to vinyl to hardy board each has it strengths and weaknesses, with the steel and vinyl should never have to paint again, while some hardy board will not need paint others will, also consider that vinyl siding can have form fit insulation making it sturdier and more insulated.

So do your research and if you have any questions drop me a note, I’ll do my best to answer your questions and take a look at this video to see the differance  siding can make on an old home.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lone Star Windows and Siding serves all metro and rural areas of the greater Texas Panhandle including Amarillo, Canyon, Borger, Pampa, Dumas, Dalhart, Groom, Panhandle, Hereford, Vega, Tulia, Fritch and many others providing replacement windows, gutter, siding – vinyl & steel – doors and more.

Lucas was showing me  around his farm when I noticed a hay trailer like I have never seen before, it had an engine on top with a lot of hydraulic  hoses going to and from the pump and a control board which consisted of several switches, so what makes this trailer so special? It is home made, Lucas wanted a quicker way to haul the big round bales of hay from the field to the farm so he started thinking and planning followed by hard work and some trial and error. The way he use to haul hay was by driving to the field with a trailer, get out of the truck, climb on the tractor, load the trailer, get back into the truck and haul it to the farm. The way he does it know is with his new self made trailer is he backs up to the bale of hay,  flips a couple of switches from in the comfort of his truck and loads the bales, he then drives to the farm and flips some more switches to unload the hay.

For me it was refreshing to see that there are still people out there that “make things work”, when met with a challenge they think, “how can I make this work?” instead of, this will never work. That is the kind of attitude I could use more of in my own life.

Here is a short video of Lucas talking about farming life and the siding work we did on his home.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lone Star Windows and Siding serves all metro and rural areas of the greater Texas Panhandle including Amarillo, Canyon, Borger, Pampa, Dumas, Dalhart, Groom, Panhandle, Hereford, Vega, Tulia, Fritch and many others providing replacement windows, gutter, siding – vinyl & steel – doors and more.

Paint is cheap, right? Not really when you consider the square footage of just one side of a house. Don’t forget the primer, because the paint apparently does not work by itself. I lugged heavy buckets back from the home improvement store, along with brushes and rollers and rags.

When I first got out the heavy ladder I would grow to hate and got up close, the peeling was worse than expected – so the scraping increased. Scraping off peeling paint is a harder chore than it looks. I spent a full weekend scraping the two sides alone.

The priming took another weekend of climbing up and down the infernal ladder. It seemed like every time I came down I would see a spot I missed.

When the actual painting finally began, it took another weekend to paint the house, and another yet to paint the trim and fix my mistakes. By now I had paint on most every window and ruined two pair of old sweats. And the end result looks, decent. It looks like a hapless homeowner went cheap.

The cost of vinyl siding is more than paint, but once it is installed there’s nothing left to do. Take the hose to it once in a while to clean it off. It doesn’t ever rot or peel. And the insulation they install underneath it adds R-value to the walls. The investment may be more, but next summer we are having our house wrapped with vinyl siding. It will add significant value to the place, but I will be most thankful for not having to climb that ladder again.

Scott

Having installed windows for over two decades, I understand the need for
windows as a practical necessity, but that people love them?! This got me to
thinking about my own shopping habits. Whenever I buy a product that makes
my life more productive, saves me time, or is just plain cool (iPhone 4s), I
tend to love those products myself.  In fact, I would venture to guess most
Americans love shopping because it gives us a great feeling.

Whether it’s an impulse item or something that you spent weeks researching
like a treasure hunt, shopping is fun; and when you find the right product
and the right people to do business with it can be a blast! How many times
have you told a friend about a purchase that you made? We all do this, and
it’s fun to tell the story about how we got our new products. It goes
something like this:

Me: Hey Derek, guess what? I’m calling you on my new iPhone 4s!
Jealous aren’t you?!

Friend: Dude its 5 in the morning! Are you mental?!!

Okay, bad example! But it does demonstrate how excited we can get to share
something that is important to us. It’s like when your kid runs up to you
and says, “Daddy, Daddy! I just lost a toof! Can I have a quarter?” (or
whatever the going rate for a tooth is at your house). You can’t help but
smile and ask for the evidence; “Yup, that’s a tooth. Here’s your quarter.”
Then that ADD-riddled child runs off all excited to tell his siblings that
he just got a quarter (and if your kids are anything like mine, they start
to work loose other teeth, whether they’re ready or not!).

So the answer to the question: Should I buy new windows? is YES! If you can
afford them and they’re something you want…or better yet, if you can
justify it with a need (“Um, honey, we really NEED new windows…”). Do a
bit of research (check out the Customer Complaint Summary at the BBB) and
ask around. Above all, enjoy the experience!  Oh! And be sure to tell a
friend!!

Abram Letkeman