Stacked Siding

The siding has been one of the greater debates of our remodel. We initially were trying to salvage all removed siding, patching only where necessary. Much of the removed siding was damaged beyond repair, and patching it would have been a expensive proposition. We ended up with, essentially, two sides of the downstairs portion of the house entirely without siding, and the other two sides needing some minor patching (these sides had not been removed.) The second floor had siding from when it was built 15 years ago and, while that siding is cheap particle board, it has been mostly untouched by the remodel. The stair tower was a new addition and thus had no existing siding.

Our options were:
a. Custom-match the new siding so that it matched the two walls we hadn't touched (East and North)
b. Remove all downstairs siding and purchase new, standard-sized siding

As I mentioned above, we had wanted to keep all exterior walls intact and simply patch up the siding. The design made this impossible on the west due to the stair tower and french doors, but we had thought that this was feasible for the other three. We changed our minds on the South side after realizing both the wear and the lack of insulation.

We removed the siding from the South and West walls, salvaging all good siding as we went. We began looking into buying siding to match the still-intact East and North walls. Unfortunately, this style of siding is no longer in production so, to match it, we were going to have to pay someone to create a custom-knife with which to shape the boards. On top of purchasing the custom knife we would then have to provide the pre-cut standard siding. Last but not least, we'd have to pay by the linear foot for the custom milling.

The costs of custom-milling siding for 1/2 of the house was comparable to the cost of purchasing certified lumber siding for the entire house. Thus, we decided to take option b and purchase stock siding. This resulted in us removing all remaining siding - that on the East and North sides of the house. This allowed us to further stabilize the exterior structure and, most importantly, insulate the the highest of standards. We figure we'll replace the shoddy particleboard-esque insulation in 15 years or so...next time we paint.

The original siding is not all lost. We hope to plane some of it down and use it in our salvage construction crafts like hand made furniture, shelving and wood accents where we need them.

Inspection Snafu

Inspectors came through and flagged our basement utility room for non-insulation. It sits below the kitchen, so they told us to either insulate the basement walls or ceiling to separate the livable from non-livable space. By framing and insulating the concrete foundation walls, our livable square footage increases. Nicer still is that the utility room now has a more defined 'indoor' feel to it. We opted against insulating the ceiling because there's a little too much mechanical stuff between the joists to cover over.

The crew re-plumbed, framed and insulated this wall in just a few hours this morning. Quite impressive.

Disregard the vile blue-green post and its easter-purple concrete base. Those aren't anything we can't banish with a bit of paint.

In the far corner we'll have the utility sink. Moving left along the wall we'll have the washer and dryer. The side access door to the driveway is off to the left of the photo. Off the right of the photo is the mechanical room and past that the basement bedroom/office/movie space.