Tammy Tutterow

Discoveries-

I think every old house owner with newer siding has wondered at one time or another just what was under their siding. I know I did. I was always secretly hoping to find a loose piece somewhere that I could pry up and look under. I think those of us interested in renovating and restoring old homes to their original charm are always anxious for a clue to our home's past.

Because the fire damaged the siding on the dormer and it couldn't be matched, the whole house had to be resided. Finally I was going to get a peek at what my house once looked like!

A couple of weeks ago I convinced David to pry some siding off of the porch so I could finally see what was under there. I think I posted a photo of it, nice thin wide clapboard in excellent condition. I think secretly in my heart I hoped that one day we would scrap siding all togeter and bring back the original wood siding.

That was before they pulled the lower siding. . . .

What we found was two different sizes of wood siding, thin on the upper part of the house, and thick on the lower. Also there appeared to be a wood strip or something inbetween the two widths. Hmmm, that was a head scratcher. In all of my bungalow style books and web searches I couldn't remember EVER seeing such a combo.

I went back home and hit the books and there it was, an illustration of a house with the two widths of siding and a trim board inbetween the two. Unfortunately, when the aluminum siding was installed (I think about 20 years ago) the installers did quite a number on the siding. Where it would have flared out at the bottom, it was sawed off. The trim board that runs the perimeter of the house was also sawed and chopped off. It is really a shame that they had to do that. I am afraid that because of it my dream of one day restoring the original wood siding is probably gone for a very long time if not forever.

But, I guess on a bright side, I got a really good clue at what once was. Next up is the search for clues at to whether there were decoratve rafter braces (like in the photo above). The soffits will be down soon and the zoom lense will be coming out!

October 25

Here it is, rescued from the rafters of the garage, the swinging kitchen door. I have my fingers crossed that we will be able to clean it up, find new hardware, and be able to re-install it. David isn't too convinced that he will like it, but I think it will be a great touch to our house.

October 21

The roofing has started. We chose a darker brown archetectural style shingle. Once done, it will look kind of like shake shingles.


The old aluminum siding is coming down. We are finally getting a look at what the original siding looks like. . . it is wide clapboards below the window line and thin above. One small perk of replacing aluminum siding is that you can take it to be recylcled and get a nice little bit of cash for it. On the downside, you find out that when they put it up they totally destroyed the character of your original wood siding and that you will ALWAYS have to have replacement siding because the original wood is seriously chopped up and damaged.

Piles and piles of trash every where.