Day 644: Some scaffolding unfolding

We've had about enough of the tired look of of our property - and likely so have our neighbours. In spite of the "charm", "character" and “authenticity”, let's face it, the place was lacking some curb appeal.

Whether it be the stained red brick face that looked like the industrial revolution took place in our driveway, or the the pointing that looked like a 4 year old smeared it on while blindfolded and likely intoxicated, or the concrete that was about as crooked as Jacob Zuma's government, or the Amazon jungle growing out front..

Anyway, enough was enough. Time to beautify the front. Be warned, this was not a job for the faint of heart .. and definitely not one that I would (or could) take on myself.

So let's start with the before pictures.
Warning: for those with weak stomachs, please feel free to skip these.

So as you can see there was a lot of room for improvement.

We hired Victorian Tile and Landscaping to do the whole lot and as you'll see over the next few blog entries, Michael and team did a fantastic job.

So week one started with scaffolding. The job was to begin the day after we arrived back from France. Only, the skip was still in the driveway when we arrived back. Fowles had decided to ignore my many phone calls over the previous week and still not pick up their skip. An angry phone call in the morning eventually solved this. The scaffolding folks arrived at 8am but unfortunately had to wait on the skip lorry .. who also had difficulty navigating the street. Anyway, with skip #3 out of the way up went the scaffolding.

And it pretty much flew up. In all it took them all of 90 minutes to get in, set up and leave. Pretty darn impressive.

But it didn't end there. Like clockwork, the scaffolding was almost immediately followed by the brick cleaning folks. We weren't planning on doing this but Michael advised that the acid they are using is pretty nasty stuff and would likely not work well with a newly redone driveway. So we followed this advice.

And the battle of the billboards commenced ...

The brick guys sealed up every possible joint in the front of the house before dousing it with acid and then power washing it off. The machine was pretty loud and big so by my logic it was also very powerful. 

BTW - fill your own caption in the photo above. My guess is a heated standoff between the guys working on the job (yellow), the manager (polo) and the owner (suit). But I'm probably way off the mark.

The result was a red brick that looked almost too red. I couldn't believe the colour transformation that occurred. Well worth doing now that we've seen the result.

And that marked the end of day one.