Removing the Vinyl Siding

While the back porch demo work was being completed, we decided to hire some one to remove the vinyl siding that covered the old house. Vinyl siding was popular back in the 60's and 70's as a no maintenance solution to having to repaint your house every 5-10 years. We had no clue when the vinyl siding was installed on our old house but we knew it needed to come off! We were a little worried about this part of the restoration because we did not know what we would find underneath the siding. We knew it that the original wood siding was still in place but we had no idea what condition it was in or what surprises we might find! The removal process took a week although it was relatively easy to take the vinyl off. We wanted to take care in making sure that the original wood siding was not damaged in the process.

Before Vinyl Removal

After Vinyl Removal

The original wood siding

Wood Shingle Detail on Side Gable

Detail on Gable was Uncovered

In the end we were pleasantly surprised that the wood siding was in excellent condition with minimal damage to the boards.  What was really interesting was that most of paint had come off or had been removed over the years. Even though the vinyl siding was ugly it did serve the purpose of protecting the wood siding underneath.

The original wooded windows had been removed and replaced with aluminum windows. You can see from the images that the original window cut outs were uncovered when the vinyl siding was removed. When the smaller aluminum windows were installed the large window cut outs were boarded over.

We also were pleasantly surprised to find some nice detail work on the front and side gables of the house. These details were seeing the light of day for the first in a very long time!