It is Finished! or, Is it Finished?

Seeing the first snowflakes fall this morning, brought back memories of last winter's cold season made even colder by the lack of siding on our house.

If you haven't heard, while Mark and I were off on our 5th anniversary Hawaiian dream vacation, the final work on the exterior of our house was being done...or so we thought. Before I get to that, here's a look at how far we've come in these 2.5 years:

The house when we bought it, complete with two, yes two, front doors not 20 feet apart.

After rectifying the front doors issue (which enabled us to expand our kitchen)
You can just make out the new blue roof, replaced thanks to hail damage. Additionally, the cinderblock is painted to match our siding. This photo was taken by my mom and sent to us while we were in Hawaii. If you look closely, you'll notice that the trim around the garage is brown. Replacing this with white trim was the finishing piece that we were waiting on...(do you hear the ominous music??)
Instead of replacing the brown trim around the garage door, the crew thought they were replacing the siding on our house - not that I didn't think it needed it, but it wasn't certainly wasn't in our budget! We got a call from the contractor while we were in Hawaii, informing us that 3/4 of our home was siding-less and as a result of their (huge!) error, we would be receiving all new siding...for free! (cue angelic choirs!)

The downside to this was that it was by now too cold to install siding - thank you MN winter - and we spent the coldest months of the year learning exactly how much protection/insulation siding provides. ...and I'm sure baffling our neighbors!

In the end, we were beyond thrilled with the final result. But this also required a repainting of the cinderblock, etc.
Repainting had to wait on the completion of the rear exterior stucco insulating our walkout basement...that's another long story. But, low and behold, just before winter, we finally have a completed exterior. For now. (Cue ominous music battled by angelic choirs. With us, you just never know what's going to happen next!)