Installing the New Window, Water View Longing

Today's posting continues with the next serial installment of "our new kitchen window". This project is self medication for an ailment called "water longing". I refer to this posting as a serial because it reminds me of the 1930s-40s westerns of Hollywood which told a continuous story in short segments every Saturday at the local movie house.  Pretty soon I fear I am going to find myself typing "meanwhile back at the ranch" in the telling of this story.

gray stripe concrete siding, on right,tar paper-middle, masonite
sheathing next to the window, beveled pine siding peeking through top center

The great siding peel continued through the first day, and well into the second. First the concrete siding came off, piece by brittle piece. That exposed some back tar paper that was put on as a wind block back in the 1960s. We hope to never have to put that cement siding back on.  One thing we have learned in the renovation projects of this house, is that you have to use the term "never" very sparingly.  In the renovation business you never know what you are going to find next, and sometimes you HAVE to temporarily keep something you hate. Far too often there is no other solution at that time. This horrid concrete siding falls into that catagory. We hate it. It is ugly, brittle, chipped,cracked and it is not in straight lines across the building. Sounds great huh?  I particularly hate the stripes on this siding. The "post war development" house I grew up in had this material on the side and the back of the house. Mass builders of the 50s used this material because it was cheap. The previous owners here thought it was just fine for their entire house, even the front elevation. As you have gathered I have no tolerance for this stuff. Surely, that will not be my last comment on this siding! ...You can see the gray concrete siding in the photo to the right of the window. It has been removed from the rest of that elevation of the wing.

black tar paper covering the side of the building, along
with the remainder of the gray strip cement siding

Next layer of siding ready for peeling, was the black tar paper seen here in the photo below and at right. In this photo the concrete siding has been removed but the tar paper is still in place. The following photo is most of the exterior wall stripped of the concrete siding with the tar paper remaining awaiting removal to get down to the next layer of siding..

black tar paper close up

top of photo is yellow fiberglass insulation, next down are the heavy yellow
pine board of the sheathing; then beveled pine siding painted white (both 140 years old),
next down is the peeled back tar paper with dust and dirt attached to the paper

 Beveled pine is the next layer under there. It has some paint on it, but it obviously was hurting when they put the "improvement" of cement siding over it. To tell you the truth, the cement siding was not an improvement at all. It might have cut maintenance, but boy it made an ugly house, that still remains to this day. Gosh, I hate living in an ugly house!  On another section of the house we tried to remove the cement siding to repaint the pine siding. It seemed like a viable idea to make the house clean white and freshly painted, but once we removed the cement siding we found that previous owners had used roofing nails (with a half inch wide head, and fat shafts) to attach the siding to the sheathing during an earlier repair. Those giant nails, split the siding and put large drill like holes in it making the siding unusable in a renovation.

close up with a cut nail, then modern wire nail,
followed by another 19th century cut nail

square cut nail in beveled pine siding

If you are asking how do we know this section of the house is original and one hundred and forty years old or so?  The sheathing and beveled siding were installed with cut nails. Cut nails were an early mass manufacturing technique invented at the end of the 18th century, but highly developed during the 19th century to mass produce nails. This was especially useful for the housing boom after the Civil War. By the end of the 19th century cut nails were replaced by newly invented wire nails. More on the window in the next few postings.