House Week 23: A Siding Trial Run

As we finish up things on the inside it has finally come time to start working on some of outside items…like siding!  This may be more existing for me than siding has ever been for anyone in the history of the world, but you need the background…

When i first saw my house it was covered in siding, the beautiful siding from the 20’s with a 2 1/2” reveal, but it had not been loved over the years and the paint was cracking in a ton of places.  One of the many things that nearly disqualified the house from being obtainable with a loan was the cracking paint as it could have lead and would need to be tested.  Apparently there is a loop hole somewhere as after a few hours of my brother helping me to sand and paint over the cracks leaving the house looking like a chickenpox patient it was considered a-ok!  Below is how the house looked from the East Wall when i purchased it back in February ‘10.

Well even through the physical siding itself was mostly good, there was a ton of mold and moss growing on the siding, all indicating that it was down hill from here.  This meant that the siding was going along with the lath and plaster walls when everything was demo’d.  i knew it was for the best, but it was still sad to see it go.  Stage One for replacing the siding was to order *new* beautiful redwood siding, which was done and delivered in June.  At the end of June we had a family painting party to paint the back sides, with TWO coats, of each and every single piece of siding…over 5,000 sq feet.  This was when i blew through three paint sprayers in three days discovering how fast i could destroy a $600 piece of machinery.

All in all it’s pretty impressive to see siding pop-up back at week 23 as it means we have finally reached a point where we can begin work on the outside of the house and to hang the siding!  We had a day to play around with the new siding gun that makes everything go MUCH faster than a hammer and nails the old fashioned way.  To keep the look we are mitering each of the corners of the siding instead of adding a trim for them to die into.  This is more common on houses that have bay windows where you would not want to add all of the trim as it would look busy, but we felt it really added a cleaner look to the house, and heck…we have to cut the pieces anyways.  What’s one cut diagonally instead of straight when you can set the saw and it will stay.

Well we finished about the same amount (as shown below) on both the east and west walls of the house.  If this is any indication of the time that will be required i think it will go up in just a few days once we get the trim around the windows and doors finished.