The picture above shows what the house looked like with the siding. Our house was built by a master craftsman - a true professional of masonry. Evidence of his workmanship is visible in the original fieldstone basement, deep outhouse pit, and lined well. What we did not know when we purchased our home was that his beautiful workmanship was also hidden from our sight, behind cheap vinyl. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that our house is actually entirely constructed of NATCO hollow tile brick overlayed with stucco.
Initially my husband was not too happy with me; however, he quite quickly forgave me and got involved in the history as well. In addition to the stucco, we found beautiful concrete sills under the windows and doors.
In addition to these great finds, we found a bat living under the siding. This critter was the first to be evicted. Unbeknownst to us, he had friends hiding in the wings!
We also had what appeared to be live wires that were melted (at least to my inexperienced eyes); however, after my husband took a look at it, he cleaned it up and we discovered the original placement of the meters and connectors for the electricity and phone.
We have tossed around a few ideas as to what to do with this feature. We are thinking about either purchasing antique meters or 1920's style house numbers. Regardless, we thought that this was kind of interesting. Of course, our curiosity did not stop there, and before you knew it...
Our crew was at it. We first moved into our house mid June of 2011. We were surprised by the large numbers of flies and bees that were constantly flying around the house, not to mention a few bats at night. We now know why! While removing the siding and other cracker-jack-box installations around the house, we discovered over 100 various wasp paper nests - some were still occupied! We also found a few birds nests, like this one. And four more bats!
The siding was installed in a very interesting fashion. First, huge pieces of styrofoam were put up and held in place with wooden strips. These strips were necessary so that the vinyl siding could be nailed into place. Unfortunately, whoever installed the siding used long horseshoe nails like this. We have hundreds of them to remove from the masonry.
As also seen in the picture above, we discovered that almost all of the windows stick out of the house two to three inches. This explains the extraordinarily large window ledges we had inside! Additionally, we found out that most of the windows are not even close to what was originally installed. Many of the windows are quite a bit smaller and in some cases, two windows were used to fill in the opening originally created for one. We also found a hidden door on the second floor. Here is what the house looks like now, without a majority of the siding. We still have some work to do, like actually closing up parts of the wall (now I know why I froze my butt off this winter!). But we love the new look - especially the white framing trim and concrete sills.
Right now the stucco is painted a rather faded and dirty brown. We are planning on painting the old fieldstone (since someone else already painted it) a dark charcoal black, the main part of the house a beautiful barn red and the trim a nice, clean bright white. We will be using some antique blue to accent a few of the smaller details located under the eaves and on the porch. Someday we are also planning on having a blue steel roof installed. I can hardly wait until it is all cleaned up and painted! It is going to look so beautiful and charming.
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