We started on the East wall in mid-2013, while the porch was being finished up. The first phase was the kitchen ell, it required new clapboard, the dentils and brackets needed attention and the kitchen door needed new trim.
While clapboards were going on the walls of the Outback, they were coming off the ell of the main house.
Here’s a problem: several decades ago, there was a previous building attached to the back of the house. It began to collapse, pulling the main house with it. Notice how the facia and dentils slant sharply downward, and then new work was build in around it. The new clapboards were carefully tapered to try to hide this.
The side decorations on the brackets (is it rude to call them “nipples”?) didn’t always survive. New ones were turned on the lathe.
By the end of August, the new siding was in place above the porch roof and the metal roof was ready to go on.
The kitchen door trim was uninspiring, so it got a whole new treatment. See Building an Entablature
By the end of July 2014, this section was complete.
While all this was happening, a whole separate project was going on out front, where the Vestibule was being renovated.
By August 0f 2015, work on the North wall was well under way. The clapboards were in good shape, so Chris elected to strip and sand the existing siding.
On the East (driveway) side, the plan was to repair the entablatures but replace only clapboards that were damaged. In retrospect, I’m not sure that was the best plan, since it’s difficult to remove just one piece without moving everything around it.
Of course, right away I ran into a problem. There had been water damage in the past at the corner.
Chris examines the hole we found in the wall.
The corner post was beefed up.
We also found something interesting: the walls of the main house had been plastered on the outside surface. You can see battens that had been nailed to the inside of the sheathing, then vertical lath had been nailed in and plastered. If you peek through, you can see the horizontal lath on the inside of the wall.
Sheathing had been removed to get at this spot. We used shiplap to replace this, its 7/8″ thickness matches the old sheathing. Then a new corner board, fresh roofing paper and new clapboards.
The entablatures were in rough shape. I salvaged the brackets and mouldings.
I built new ones (see Building an Entablature).
By October, the entablatures had been repaired and the wall had a mix of old and new clapboards. Priming and painting continued into November.
Meanwhile, work proceeded apace on the North wall, and soon there was a forest of scaffolding.
High work. Scaping, sanding and painting. New dentils. Note the fall harnesses.
and by the time snow fell, the East and North walls were in good shape.