Better get a summer project in! Time for the back wall

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Mick_VT
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Better get a summer project in! Time for the back wall

Post by Mick_VT »

The slow process of rejuvenating the outside of the house has been going on for a few years now. The front and one side of the house are done. The back and another side have yet to be done, but the final side will be removed and replaced as part of the intended restoration of the full length of the ell. Each side so far has taken multiple years to strip the 150+ years of paint, do repairs and repaint properly. I am now about 8 years or so into this project (I did take some years off!
at least two of which where while I focussed on other things like my upcoming divorce :lol:)

So this year, after the shock I got when examining the clapboards on the rear of the house a month or two ago, I decided I needed to take this on this year. The back of the house does not see any direct sun, it backs against a steep hillside that is wooded and does not have a great deal of topsoil. As such it is prone to dampness both in terms of not getting much natural drying and also from water that makes it's way down the hill and keeps the ground moist for much of the year. There will be attempts to better drain it in the future, thou due to the very thin topsoil a drain may not be possible.

Due to the location and moisture exposure the rear claps were in no where near the wonderfully preserved state of those on the front and sides. Multiple poor repairs had happened over the years, windows and doorways had been patched without interleaving the new boards with the old and the majority of old claps had the 1/16" - 1/8" of lead paint that the front and sides have. So after consideration of location, amount of repairs, the environment, and the time consuming nature of stripping the old clapboards, I have made the tough decision to remove all the boards and replace with new.

I hate to remove old (and particularly original) wood, but as this is the back of the house and that original wood is spread between lots of bad repairs I don't feel quite so bad this time. Removing all the clapboard gives some opportunity that I would not otherwise have:

  1. I can wrap the sheathing with Tyvek
  2. I can tighten the rear of the house by refastening the sheathing
  3. I can swap to a new engineered product that will better withstand / repel the damp environment (this stuff is not available in the 5" width of the original claps. Swapping to 6" boards on the back will not matter aesthetically if I do the whole back of the house. I have chosen Boral http://www.boralamerica.com/TruExterior on recommendation from my lumber yard. It is more expensive than Fir, but less than Cedar
  4. I can find the locations of previous doors and windows, as I may choose to restore some more of them as I rework the interior of the house

So Monday, the pry bars and hammers came out! Wish me luck, I have never sided a complete wall before!
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Re: Better get a summer project in! Time for the back wall

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A few before shots. The worst part, the bit that made me decide this had to happen right now, was the area below the kitchen window (middle pic) where the claps were disintegrating through rot. This happened at this particular location as it's the top of where the sheet tin falls, that I put to keep snow off the bottom of the house. A bit of an "old farmer's solution" to snow and damp accumulation that I inherited from the PO. I intend to do something a little better this fall if I have time - the new claps will provide an incentive! :D

As an aside, two out of the four windows you see are restorations of what was originally there - they had been closed up and replaced with tiny Andersen crank out windows over the years. I restored the former glory - As mentioned I expect to find where others where as this project progresses. The clapboard repairs give me some clues
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Re: Better get a summer project in! Time for the back wall

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The past two days I focussed on getting the old clapboard off. I uncovered two previous openings. In the third picture there is what was likely a doorway. From the nails used to close it up it disappeared i the nineteenth century. As can be seen in the second picture I also uncovered the original kitchen window
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Re: Better get a summer project in! Time for the back wall

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A couple of interesting discoveries along the way:

1. A sketch in pencil on the back of one of the original 1860s clapboards appears to show the cross section of a handrail, or possibly the layout of the property in some way

2. Red paint, as was true with a lot of Vermont houses the back side was painted in barn red. I could find no evidence of it being painted the yellow color that the front and sides were. This was supposedly to cut costs (red oxide barn paint was cheap). It will be interesting to see if I can find the brown color on the trim, or if the back was white trim (also like a barn). At this point I am considering painting the new claps in this red, but leaving the trim dark brown to match the rest of the house - should look very Victorian!
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Re: Better get a summer project in! Time for the back wall

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More claps removed shows the remains of the kitchen window opening, apparently patched up with salvage materials from when the hay barn was removed in the fifties / sixties
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Re: Better get a summer project in! Time for the back wall

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Today I focussed on repairing the sheathing. I used some OSB that I happened to already have. The rot was not bad at all - and it was nice to see that the sills were fine and the insulation was dry

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Re: Better get a summer project in! Time for the back wall

Post by Lily left the valley »

Mick, are you trying to save any of the rear siding that might still be in ok shape for matching repairs to the front or sides later if needed?

I wonder if that drawing was depicting the slope of the property. A sort of topography map?
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Re: Better get a summer project in! Time for the back wall

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Lily left the valley wrote:Mick, are you trying to save any of the rear siding that might still be in ok shape for matching repairs to the front or sides later if needed?

I wonder if that drawing was depicting the slope of the property. A sort of topography map?


I would love to Lily, but it's brittle and held on with iron nails. not to mention the fact that it is all glued together with decades of lead paint. It is almost impossible to remove without splits. On the plus side the rest of the house which has this old stuff is all restored already.
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Re: Better get a summer project in! Time for the back wall

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80 lengths of 16' siding arrived this morning. They charged me $5 to palletize, wrap and deliver onto my lawn with a boom truck... now that's $5 well spent IMO!
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Re: Better get a summer project in! Time for the back wall

Post by Olson185 »

I still have large rubber bands to put around the ends of the 16'ers....prevents the boards from "wagging" around while carrying them [edit: in groups of whatever is comfortable] and they don't feel quite so heavy.
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Fourth generation in a family of artists, engineers, architects, woodworkers, and metalworkers. Mine is a family of Viking craftsmen. What we can't create, we pillage, and there's nothing we can't create. But, sometimes, we pillage anyway.

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