What I Did on My Summer Vacation

(click on photos for a larger image)

As I mentioned in the last post, thanks to prodding by my sister, Karen -- and her active help in doing the work -- I have finally started the much-needed project of re-siding my house.  In the last post, I focused on the easiest part of the project: re-siding what remains as exterior of the east wall and gable of the original structure. This post is about the west wall of the house: half being original and half being the 1930s addition to the house.

First, a couple of photos to illustrate just why residing the house (and especially the west wall) is so necessary.

As I'd said in the last post, part of the problem is that the wood siding I had installed in about 1990 wasn't the best quality wood -- what is, these days? And part of the problem is due to a mistake I made in installing it.   We see the result here: rotted wood -- my attempt the forestall this very problem actually contributed to causing it.

This photo was taken after we had ripped off about half the siding of this "bay".  This "bay" is part of the original structure, which was three rooms at ground and two rooms above.The (barely visible) "bay" to the right is part of the 1930s addition to the house.. 

The sunburst in the gable is from a demolished house, as are the pillars on the porch (not visible in this photo). The octagonal window and cedar shingles below the sunburst are my doing from about 1990.

This photo shows the start of re-siding this "bay". The white board above the foundation is a 1x12 PVC board -- expensive, but impervious to water. I'll run a band like this all around the foundation.  To be honest, it's strictly for appearance, as a visual "base" of the walls.

 

This photo, taken from the south-west corner of the house, shows the west wall with the new siding and trim up, as yet unpainted. I decided to forego painting it just yet as I wanted to move the scaffolding to allow us to install siding on the south wall of the sun-room (recall, that wall is in effect on the third floor). Even with the two of us, it took several hours to raise the five levels of scaffolding necessary to work on the sun-room south wall.

 And from the north-west.

As the west wall of the house gets the worst of the weather, I decided to build "false roofs" over the kitchen and dining room windows to divert some of the rainwater away from them.

The to-do list for this side of the house is:

1) install soffits under the "false roofs";

2) build/install the window treatments for the kitchen and dining room windows;

3) decide how I'm going to finish that bedroom dormer;

4) paint it all

This photo, taken from the south-west corner, shows the south wall of the house ... or rather, of the "main" part of the house -- there is a whole house-sized extension to the east. To the left, at ground-level, the basement door. Above that, dining room windows. To the right, living room windows. To the right, a covered patio (I originally intended it to be open to the sky, but I eventually roofed it, fearing that freezing water in the sub-strate would over time destroy the retaining-wall). Above the dining room is the master bedroom -- Yes! I still use that term. And to the right of that is the sun-room.

When I bought the house, where the sun-room is now was just a flat roof above the 1930s extension of the living room. I turned what had been a small bedroom and a small bathroom and hallway into the master bedroom (12x16), and replaced a small door which had opened from the hall to that flat roof with a large sliding-glass patio-door.  I thought, "Great! I have a private patio off my bedroom!" However, water always finds a way, and a few years later, water dripping from the roof above was leaking in at the patio-door. And that is why I built the sun-room ... which also has a flat roof, but it's tied into other roofs, rather than abutting walls, as the 1930s flat roof had,

I didn't have scaffolding when I installed the old wood siding in about 1990. What I had was two ladders -- of different lengths, and thus often different angles when extended -- and ladder-jacks, with a 2x12 bridging the gap. Can you imaging how much fun it was to install the siding above the master bedroom window?