House projects, Part Two

My Uncle Terry once said that if you want a project, buy a house. I've decided that if you want a BIG project, buy an old house.

On the agenda this summer: repainting the exterior of the house, putting up a picket fence, filling in an old cistern & hanging a new front storm door & closet door.

Uncovering the cistern. The cement seal cracked, so Chris broke it up with a sledge hammer.

After the demo. This hole is about 8 feet deep and 8 feet wide. That pipe you see on the right covered in grass clippings was the pipe that cyphoned all the rain water from the gutters into this hole to fill the cistern. Then people used the water from the cistern to water their plants, etc. The hole was dry, so it doesn't work any more.

The dirt to fill the hole. No baby-Jessica-down-the-well moments for us!

Random info: I was researching what people do with old cisterns, and many people opt to refurbish them. Ours is a wreck, and the cost to refurbish it plus the danger of someone falling in made that not an option for us. But I read about one home owner who decided to turn their old cistern into a wine cellar. They built an extention onto their house that went over the cistern, and they added a special door, ladder, lighting and shelving to create their custom wine cellar. I'm not sure if the cool factor out weighs the creepy factor on that decision.

And now for the house paint color dilemma:

Our house, pre paint job. It's so gray here all winter that I want to paint the house a bright color. But our roof shingles are gray with green specks. Ideas? Suggestions?

We were thinking a pale green like this or a deep yellow/gold.

The view from our porch. All the houses are cream, so that color is out.

The painter thinks he's going to have our paint job done by Annaliese's baptism. We shall see...