Poof! No more siding! Well, not 'poof' exactly. It actually involved a crowbar, sawzall, shovel, and other nasty implements. But it had to be done. You may notice the siding is different: the front of the house (with my mama standing in front, above, and the first pic below) has asbestos shingles; the side of the house (that Shawn was ripping down in the second picture below) has what we believe was original wood siding. The asbestos shingles we're keeping to place back over the completed wall.
Also, in that picture above of the original wood siding Shawn's removing, you may notice a grey concrete foundation. Look carefully in Shawn's shadow. It's not a concrete foundation, it's a 1-2 foot deep brick foundation with a 1/4-1/2 inch thick layer of concrete "painted" (like stucco) over it. W. T. F....?
While I have many complaints with the people who tried to fix the house up over the years (many....), I'd like to take a moment to point out some rather impressive original work. Take a look at the following picture.
At this point (after a century of hard work by termites, mold, and other forces of nature), it's a little hard to find the beauty in this. The sill, is outlined in green, and the corner stud in yellow. That oak sill was shaped with an ax (we could still see the marks) and the corner stud had a square knob hand carved into its base. The sill had a corresponding notch cut into it so the two pieces would fit firmly together. Can you imagine doing all that work?
Speaking of work, today we began to talk about siding. This asbestos can't stick around forever and, let's face it, the formerly nice wood siding is crap. Right now, I'm loving Newell Turner's siding on Twilight Field. It's vinyl (super easy to care for) and the look of vertical lines gives it a real farmhouse look. Well, we'll see. We have plenty of other work to do first. :-)
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