Sometimes a short cut repair is better than nothing

Our chicken coop/storage shed/cat dwelling sure was (and actually, still is) in bad shape.

Very

Bad

Shape

But with a few sheets of siding and less than two cans of paint, at least it isn’t an eyesore like it was.

Here it is as we got started. My husband had already began adding the siding to the bottom on the left before I remembered to get a photo.  He also emptied it out.

Yep, he did a clean up on the inside too!  That man is a keeper. (Unlike some of the spider webby piles of hoarded junk we found inside)

We know that the correct way to repair this structure would have been to pull all the siding off. It’s rotting.  But- so is the rest of the building and we aren’t ready to tear it all down and rebuild.  It’s still functional for what we needed.

What we did instead was cover up the worst part and paint the rest.  

Paint is magic.

After adding a slice of siding over the bottom, we thought a strip of trim would help it look more intentional instead of just bandaged.

Rich also trimmed off the most ragged of the ends of the roof boards and I painted over them too.  

See how bad they were to start with?  Also, years ago when I used this shed as an antique store, I’d painted vines around the entry, added cute aqua shutters, and a barn door as a canopy over the entry.  Well most of it rotted away with time, but those vines were still hanging in.  I’d used oil based paint, which is why I think it held up so well.  

To paint over them, I’d need to prime, but I still kind of liked them and the history of adding them, so instead, I got a small brush and painted around the leaves.

Same with the metal peacocks.  They had hung on that building for 30 years, from way back when we used to raise peafowl.  I had to leave those, they were history.

It isn’t done right, but it’s done good enough.  Sometimes you gotta just slap some lipstick on a pig and get on with things, right?  It’s better than it was. And at under $250 for the clean up, as opposed to the cost of demolition and rebuilding? 

I’m pretty happy with the cosmetic improvements.  This pig is much cuter with make up.