Siding Day 3

This is what the house looked like after a full day of de-asbestosing yesterday. The back side still has to be done, along with half of the side closest to the neighbors. I took these this morning on the way out to work, so the light's not very good. You can get an idea though of all the places where the tarpaper will have to be scraped of by hand though, and there are LOTS of nails that will have to be somehow accommodated since we can't get them out. These issues aside, the wood is is good condition so far!







One of the contractors brings his little doggy - I scared it terribly yesterday when I popped my head out of an upstairs window while he was exploring the backyard.



This morning's debris - note the "Danger" printed on all the bags...

Day 2 Siding Update

Andy got a call midday to meet the guy back at the house to go over a few things...

They underestimated the amount of time needed for the job, so they won't be done today and they might not even be done tomorrow. The wood looks pretty good so far except the tar paper isn't wanting to come off, and several of the nails used to hang the asbestos can't be removed without damaging the wood boards. Then there's the high probability of the original paint being lead-based, but we'll save that bit for next week.

Here are a few pictures I took this morning of things other than the siding...

The new fence! We haven't treated it yet, and there is a pattern to the boards that you can't see from this angle, but we're quite pleased with it.


Andy's new raised beds for our veggies. He and his dad built them a couple weeks ago - they really do get sun, I promise.



An idea of the GLUT of blueberries our three bushes produced this year. We've been picking and picking and picking and they just don't end.



My dahlia bush that has probably been crushed by flying siding today...



And last but not least, our "new" front door. We bought this months ago at the Rebuilding Center and it languished in the garage until Andy's dad pulled it out, stripped off several layers of paint, patched up all the odd spots, and painted it for us. I can't wait until it takes it's place on a freshly painted house!

A new window...sort of

Taking off the 1st layer of siding uncovered an original window! We knew it was there technically, but it's nice to see it.

All the bottom pieces of trim are missing from the windows, and they weren't removed very nicely. We suspect they jutted out in a nice ledge and so they had to go when the vinyl was added.

All our hopes are pinned on this little peek:

Who knew...

...we could get so excited over siding?

Andy and I have planned for the past year or so to take off the house's dirty diaper of ugly vinyl siding this summer in conjunction with replacing the fence and adding a deck. Several weeks ago, in a sunny day post-happy hour frenzy, we decided to pull off a chunk of the offensive siding to check out the wood beneath. What we got instead was a nice buzz-kill of asbestos. Lab tests, nail biting, Department of Environmental Quality regulation research, and a couple abatement bids later, and yesterday marked the start of our kind-of-scary journey to a better looking "restored" house.

So, to properly keep track we have:

1 layer baby poop tan vinyl siding
1 layer Styrofoam
1 layer ugly browny-mauve asbestos siding
1 layer tar paper
1 hopefully intact and beautiful, yet a completely crapshoot layer of indeterminate 80 year old (this year!)wood

Let's have some photos!

Day 1 pre-start:











Day 1 end of day:

And then there's...

The other four legged house beast. Carmella aka Puppa aka Ms. Nips. She goes by the "if you've got it, flaunt it" school of thinking as seen below. She's very sweet and very good except when she's being very good at being very bad. She loves her Andy.

Bad blogger!

Someone's doing a great job of updating this thing...

We've had a ridiculous past few months - more renovations to the house, visits from ALL the parents (my mom is actually landing right now, but that counts), my week at camp, TWO new furry friends...

Here are our lovey kits:

Hubert

Neil Young

Stella

And our sweet little alien Wombat who didn't share his plans to return to his mothership so soon. We miss our funny guy.