A break in the rain

It's been raining a lot this week, so not much work got done on Monday or Tuesday.  Wednesday was beautiful, and today we just skirted the edge of a giant storm, so there were a lot of people swarming over the house, trying to make progress before it starts pouring again.  The trim guys moved around to the back of the house, so they wouldn't interfere with the porch framing guys, who just got started in the front!

The basic frame of the porch deck is up, and the columns are started.  The boxed-in part of the columns will get a layer of durarock around them, which will then be the base for the stone veneer.  The bluestone caps will go on top of the boxes, and the rest of the posts will continue up to support the roof beams.

The current view of the front of the house with the new bases of the porch columns.

The attic dormer is now the only piece of roof without soffit covering.

The trim work around the front bathroom window did not turn out like our drawing indicated.  It happened for several good reasons having to do with how the boards actually fit together in 3D, and how they were trying to mask the fact that none of the tops of our upstairs windows quite line up with each other.  After sitting around with Tony in the front yard, sketching on a piece of plywood, we came up with a better way to do it that preserves the intention of the drawing, which was to make this little square part of a bank of three equal squares, and to visually bump it out from the rest of the trim boards.  The guys working on the trim are going to get back around to this window, tear off what they did, and do it over.

The fascia boards and soffits are all finished and looking sharp.

Most of the windows are now trimmed out in new Azek PVC boards, and the sills replaced.  There is still a bit of extra moulding detail to go onto the windows.

The new window upstairs is getting its finishing touches, and looks so much better than the old one.  This section of wall is still completely encased in plastic sheeting on the inside, so we haven't had a chance to look through it yet!

A bit more trim around the top

 The soffit covering and top trim board now make it almost all the way around the top roof.  It's starting to feel like we've definitely turned the corner and the house is getting more beautiful again.

The two corners on the south side have received the final trim treatment.  Corner boards come up the wall and meet the top trim board in a bumped-out box (must be an architectural word for that).  The moulding that meets the soffit boards continues in a straight line from that corner board bumpout, masking the narrow stripe of soffit vent material.  Tony and I spent a while trying to figure out how these boards were all going to come together, and I think it turned out nice.

Trim work around the soffits begins

The new Azek fascia boards are around the top roof now, and the soffits are starting to be closed in.  Good thing too, I thought I heard a bird flapping around in there the other morning...

View from the back.

The soffits are being done with a tongue and groove beadboard material.  On the inner edge there will be a Coravent strip installed and hidden behind a piece of moulding.  Right now there's just a gap.

Roof is finished

Yesterday the last of the fascia support boards were installed on the lower roof segments.

Thankfully no big surprises in the kitchen roof extension.

The new shingles are now completely installed, along with all the new roof vents.

Here's the current state of the back of the house...

... and the front of the house.

A big pile of new Azek material for doing the trim work showed up yesterday.

This is the next step, starting today.  The old wooden window sills were sawed off and wrapped in aluminum when the vinyl went up.  Here's one with the aluminum off, showing the old painted (and cracked) wood.  They are going to saw into the bottom of each sill, take them out, and replace them with the new Azek sills.  Then the rest of the trim goes around the window, with the necessary flashing under it.  Later, the new siding planks will just slide in behind a lip in the trim so that you can't see any seam.

Roofing continues

The roofing guys are putting in a lot more work than they had bargained for, but it's turning out nicely.  It turns out that all the lumber supporting the edge of the roof on the inside of the soffits had been toenailed into the top of the old shingle siding.  One of the guys said this was standard practice in the 1930s to make the walls waterproof.  But now it means all the boards supporting the soffits had to come out in order to get all the siding off.  On the plus side, they are ahead of schedule getting all the old siding off.  On the minus side, they are behind schedule on finishing the roof, because they were forced to get all the siding off in order to finish it.

Today they got almost all the way around the roof with the new soffit supports.  The new shingles almost cover the whole top roof now, just a little bit on the very top remains where the new ridge vent goes.  The little stubby roofs on the first floor (over the kitchen extension and the library) will get stripped and reshingled tomorrow.

The new supports under the eaves (left) are much sturdier than the old toenailed supports (right, but hard to see in the shadow).  The edge of the roof won't sag anymore.  The guys working on the roof said that the planking under the shingles was is excellent shape for a house of our vintage, except for right under the attic dormer where they had to replace a few rotten boards.  I suspect the old leaky attic window which used to be in that dormer before we replaced it.

The exciting part tomorrow will be when they open up this part of the roof over the kitchen extension and we find out what kind of shape it's in.  After stripping everything off the sides and bottom of it today, they confirmed that it was never ventilated when it was built.  It's a funny roof, and doesn't match the rest of the house.  I think it was probably one of the earliest remodeling jobs done to the house.  That hole in the soffit turns out to be the bathroom vent exhaust, which they are going to reroute to a more standard location.

...On with the new roof

Big blowers were going all day to try to dry out the attic...  Looks OK now.

New shingles are going on the roof!  They've made it halfway around today.  Also there was some work on the fascia boards around the dormer, and they had to take the attic window out and put it back in again since it had been installed on top of the old siding.

...and the north side of the house has had all the siding removed and has been newly wrapped.

Dodged a bullet (probably)

It turns out the storm that made our incomplete roof start leaking was the same one that produced a quasi-tornado in New York City yesterday.  The second storm didn't cause any leaks, and the light rain we've had since then is just rolling off the roof like it's supposed to.  After we had a meeting this morning up in the attic, they decided to replace the big cast-iron vent pipe that is sticking out of the roof, because that seems to be where a lot of the problem was during the big storm.  Luckily the old cast iron part is already tied into a new PVC part about five feet down, so it should be an easy job.  They are up on the roof now putting up extra tarps, just in case, and they are going to add some more ice and water barrier material higher up on the roof than they had planned.  Then they'll bring in a mold expert in a few weeks to go up in the attic and make sure nothing got started up there when it got wet last night.

But the rain is slacking off now, and the forecast has a lot of sunny days coming up.  I hope we've escaped disaster!

Off with the old roof...

We had three gloriously clear and crisp September days in a row, perfect time to take off the old roof shingles and put up the new ones.  What could possibly go wrong?  But there were a couple surprises...  The first was that they immediately discovered there were actually not two, but three layers of shingles up on the roof, and the top one was just stapled to the other two.  So that took longer than expected, and filled up the first dumpster really fast.

Once the shingles were off, the new ice and water barrier went on.

The second surprise was that the vinyl job was covering up a bunch of sagging boards under the front eaves.  This picture was taken this morning.

By this afternoon, the guys used their ratcheting scaffolding supports like big spreader clamps to jack the sagging middle back up, and installed new boards to hold up the eaves.  They also stripped off all the rest of the old siding on the front and wrapped that wall.

Only one side of the house has original siding left now.  Note the guy using the sawzall to even out the new fascia support boards, and all the big piles of yet-to-be-installed roofing shingles that were craned up there today.  Those shingles would have been installed by now if not for the two surprises...

There were quite a few roofing guys working extra hard today, because there's high wind and thunderstorms forecast for tonight.  By the end of the day, they were confident that they had the roof all sealed up with the ice and water barrier, and then the threw tarps weighted with roofing shingles over it for good measure.

But tonight, as the first thunderstorm went over, I heard an ominous drip, drip in the attic.  I went up to find a few leaks on one side of the roof, mostly near where the plumbing vent pipes stick out.  Sophie and I distributed tarps and buckets around the attic to catch the drips.  Good thing there's another long sunny period forecast from tomorrow on, because those roofers have a lot more work to do.

The rain has slacked off now and the drips stopped, but I'm nervous about the even bigger storm that supposed to hit in the middle of the night.  Fingers crossed...

Groundwork laid

The yard is now graded AWAY from the house, and the dirt brought up a bit higher than the porch footings.

What's under that vinyl?

Under the vinyl siding is the old wide wooden siding (probably covered in lead paint).

The old siding came together at nice mitered corners.

A good view of the old siding.  It turns out that the original 1930 siding was wide boards on the bottom, shingles on the second story, and some band in the middle separating the two, which must have been torn off when the vinyl job was done.

The old boards under the soffits were pretty strange looking.  Luckily there's enough structure up there to attach the new material we planned to put up.

This is all the wall insulation we had.  About a half inch of styrofoam, nailed under the vinyl, with all kinds of gaps in it.  No wonder our heating bills are so high.

New insulation is being blown into our wall cavities as we speak.

Already the rooms are less echoey and the traffic noise from Main St. is greatly reduced.

Commence digging!

A backhoe shows up on our front lawn, where it will live for the next few days.

Tony (our contractor) thought he'd have to make custom forms for the porch footings, until he discovered that sonotubes come in really big sizes.

The following day, concrete poured and curing...  and the rest of the front stoop is removed.

A couple days later, concrete is cured and water barrier is installed around front of house.

The first few days

You know serious numbers of workers will be showing up when a port-a-potty suddenly appears in your driveway.

The first step was to replace the old, unopenable yet unlatchable basement windows.  This bank of four windows in my basement wood shop was formerly covered by the vinyl siding.  Now I have natural light in my shop!  (which suddenly makes me realize it needs cleaning)

The new bank of windows upstairs replaces our last set of 1950's-era aluminum windows that never latched correctly, and let in all kinds of cold air in the winter.  Our crusade against bad old windows is almost complete!

Finally, the steps are ripped off the front stoop.  On the inside, we pull a bench in front of the front door to remind us not to use it.

Prep work

Labor day, 2010

Before the guys with the excavator showed up to start work, we needed to take out all the shrubbery from the front.  Some of it I was glad to get rid of, some of it will be missed.  The fun part was when we stirred up an underground bee's nest below the rhododendron.  Nobody got stung, but we kept far away from that part of the yard for a while.

Beth taking a break after hauling branches

With all the shrubs removed, it was suddenly obvious that some of the front yard was sloping toward the house.  No wonder that side of the basement wall gets damp.  This will need to be regraded!

The "before" pictures

Winter 2009:

These are the pictures I took of the house in the exterior state it has been in since we bought it (10 years ago now!), which we then used all spring to brainstorm ideas for how it should look.  Our neighbor Rose gave them to her design students for additional brainstorming too!  The project was necessitated by (1) crumbling apart vinyl-like siding that is probably over 30 years old, (2) a front stoop in bad repair that we always thought looked funny, (3) no insulation in the walls, and (4) roof shingles nearing the end of their lifetime.

Street view from north side

Street view

Street view from south (driveway) side

View of south side and back from driveway

View from back yard