It was time to tackle the exterior; here are a few pictures to illuminate the conditions that confronted me!
Missing window-sill and peeling paint
I think you can see that the exterior was a shambles and in equal need, to the interior, of a total revamp. While initially JW had been optimistic about the shape of the cedar shake shingles, after working at the house a year (and putting my hand right through a couple shakes one day when I leaned against the house), we both realized that nearly all the exterior would need to be replaced with a new siding material. Even though they are quite expensive, I wanted to stay with cedar shakes since they were original to the house and very much part of its charm.
I rented another enormous yard ornament (AKA dumpster) and JW started ripping off the old shakes on the south-side of the house. It was at this point he realized that he could feel the AC from the inside pouring out through the exposed sheathing. Since we had not gutted that side of the house, we had not insulated the walls. We decided to rent the Hopper (a nifty machine that you put pulp insulation into and it spits the insulation through a hose into the house wall cavities) and spent that first day blowing insulation into the wall cavities between the studs.
We had some prep work to do prior to rental, we had to remove all the cedar around the house and cut holes in the house sheathing where we would insert the hose to blow in the insulation. Now, blowing in insulation sounds easy and in theory it is, SO what could go wrong? Of course, nearly everything. First, its late spring, sunny and HOT, we are working on the south-side of the house that gets sun until 3:00 PM, awesome! Next, the sheathing was so hard that JW’s saw could barely cut the circular openings; he went through a lot of blades that first half of the day. We had started early so our day was not shot when we went to Lowes to pick up the machine around noon.
We loaded up the truck with the Hopper and bags of insulation and headed back, drank some water and got started. We had about 20 cavities to fill, I was filling the Hopper and JW was holding the hose into the cavities to monitor the fill. First four went fine and filled in a couple minutes each, my hopes were high that we would be done by 2 PM! But then, the Hopper just stopped spitting out the insulation – it just stopped working!! We had to go to another Lowes to get another machine (at which point they gave us a free day). Back to it around 1:30 PM, then the hose kept getting blocked. We learned through lots of trial and error that you had to keep the Hopper filled but not too full to keep it spitting out the insulation at a steady rate. And you had to keep juggling the hose to keep it from getting clogged in the middle like an anaconda that had eaten something too big to digest. Lastly, we ran out of bags of insulation with two cavities to go! So, back to Lowes but by 6 PM we were done with the insulation and I looked like I’d been tarred and feathered – what a messy job! The next day we started to put up cedar shakes.
Putting up shakes is a two man job if you want it to happen with relative speed. One person mans the walk board and staples up shingles while the ground person makes cuts where needed and hands up shingles to the walk board person. There’s several steps to getting the shingles on level and I learned tons about how to protect your house from the weather and got pretty good at cutting shingles and putting them up. I put the first coat of brown stain on the whole house. By summer’s end I was done! I must admit that I hired a painter friend to stain the house a second time and by the time he was done, the house looked like it had dipped in chocolate! It made me so happy.
I made a few changes to the exterior design along the way. Once the cedar was off the house, I decided to give the south and north gable ends the same appearance as the front gable on the house, so we used Hardy Plank with a stucco finish. Those gable ends were very high due to the steep pitch of the roof but matching all the gables on the house gave it even more Tudor charm.
The back of the house was a problem due to the previous owners randomly tacking up crappy wires to run all kinds of things into the house with no effort to keep that back wall looking organized or neat, it was one big jumble of wiring entering the house. The only necessary wiring was the main electric cable from Dominion Power. That stayed, the rest got rerouted or removed! The back wall also got Hardy Plank, like the gable ends, to give a nice bright clean look with an classic barn light over the back door.
I decide to replace the original front stoop because the brick step treads were crumbling as the old mortar started to fail and the wrought iron hand rails were poor quality (think ugly). I decided on a blue stone walk and solid granite step treads. I did not put back up hand rails, so the front stoop looks spacious and clean.
One hilarious event (sure hope JW doesn’t read this, cause I don’t think he thought it was funny), while redoing the front door area, the shed roof over the front door needed a new ceiling because the bead board was in such bad shape. JW had noticed a squirrel climbing the side of the house and getting onto the shed roof and then slipping under the copper roofing into the space above the bead board that was to be replaced. I had noticed twigs and leaves sticking out under the copper roof and realized there was a squirrel nest filling that cavity but I never said anything to JW, assuming he saw that same thing. Well, he didn’t connect the dots and was standing under that bead board when he pulled it down. As you can imagine, that the entire squirrels nest came down too, dumping right onto JW’s head and leaving a knee deep pile of squirrel debris on my front stoop!
I came home and had to wade through the fallen nest to get into my house; a nasty gram from JW awaited me on the dining room table, as if I had told the squirrel to build there! I went back outside and cleaned it up so JW would finish the job the next day, wishing I had been there to witness the event. That bead board ceiling is still not painted; it’s one of those small matters that I have stopped noticing needs to be finished.
So now the exterior was done as was the first floor. Two of the upstairs rooms were basically complete: the front bedroom and my closet, I hoped that finishing the upstairs would be a breeze.
