OHW

So, we eventually picked a contractor to reproduce some of the molding, trim, corner boards, etc. He'll be coming over in mid-August to do his thing. In the mean time, we've also decided to do the front of the house this year as well. Take a look if you get a chance - I'm particularly interested in ...

You could bring in a contractor and watch like crazy. Learn all you can and do the rest yourself. That would be preferable to fixing until exhaustion, calling in a contractor, and seeing that you were spinning your wheels while the tricks of the trade were there all along. This is the plan for now....

Thanks for the kind words, folks. Things haven't been quite as exciting over the past few days, as we've been taking things to the recycling center/dump. The trim you see around the windows is still aluminum - we left it on to protect against the frequent rains we've been having in these parts. A fe...

So, we've continued pulling siding off and found some sections to be worse off than expected. Furthermore, the path of destruction left in the insulbrick's wake is pretty ugly - they splintered boards, mangled trim, and bludgeoned any sharp angles to allow the siding to lie flat. I'm an impatient pe...

Good catch on the side gable window, it was full height at one point. When the attic was finished 10 years ago, they put a built-in bench along that wall and had to use a shorter replacement window as a result. The aluminum 'patch' at the bottom looked ok in person but didn't photograph well. I've s...

Your house presents a curious conflict in my opinion. The exterior generally appears rather '50s vintage yet the interior woodwork is more suited to its stated age of around 1900. I like it a lot! The den windows may match the rest of the house because they may have been moved from the dining room ...

Surely I'm not the first to encounter this problem... right?

The expert has spoken. :D It's up to you what you call it, but Rikki knows way-y-y more than I do. I'd say you still can go with QA cottage if you find traces of gingerbread under there, or if you feel like it, you can make it one! The asbestos info talks a lot about 'disturbing' it and releasing f...

Hello, My wife and I have a 1906 cottage-type house that has been insensitively 'upgraded' with (first) insul-brick and (later) aluminum siding. I've just started removing both layers with the ultimate goal of restoring the original clapboards. This process is agonizingly slow due to the 30+ minutes...

Well, that's nice and straightforward! I'm glad the windows match and because of that I have hopes that the siding will too. Maybe if you looked under the bottom edge of the aluminum you could see something. By the way, congratulations that it wasn't vinyl. Aluminum means cash. [I'd take it all off...