The Big Spring Project
My latest restoration project has been on the driveway side of the house. I did a large amount of work on the exterior kitchen wall, kitchen stoop, and laundry room wall last year. This year’s work consists of stripping the siding from the rest of this side of the house and restoring what’s behind it, putting up a picket fence so Joy the Papillon has a place to run safely off the leash, and doing some much-needed landscaping.
Here is this side of the house as it appeared when my friend finished having the debris cleared off the house, new roof put on, and aluminum siding painted.
Here’s the before and after of the work my mom and I did last year. What a big difference!
This old photograph was provided to me by the descendants of John McCuiston. To the left you can see an awning that used to be over the laundry room window. The refrigerator also used to be in this room. To the right is the three-walled garage area with upstairs storage room. You can see where there was another outbuilding of some sort in the background. The two trees behind this building I believe to be the same two trees that stand there now. My great-uncle Johnny thinks they are persimmon trees, but because there is no longer a male or female tree I do not have any fruit. I hope to be able to remedy that soon.
At some point in the 1980s a connector was built from the laundry room/pantry to the garage, which you now see today.
Here we go! I took a week off of work to start the project of stripping the siding and putting up the picket fence. Having been a three-walled garage, I had no idea what was behind the siding where there was now a double window and door, but I knew there would be siding behind the rest of the aluminum.
I grabbed my little pink hammer and went to work! |
After a short time, all of the siding was gone off the bottom portion of the house. As expected, there was no siding. If you look at the top corners just under the overhang, you can see the outline of the original opening when it was a three-walled garage downstairs.
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I decided to go with Hardy Board for the siding that would go up on the missing portion. Because I had absolutely no experience in working with this material and also because I didn’t care to purchase the tools for this one-time project, I decided to get some friends of mine to help out.
My friends came by to offer a hand. The siding started coming down, and it was discovered that the siding was a Dutch siding, which is different that what is on the house itself.
I would have loved to have copper carriage house lights, but they are so expensive! I couldn’t see spending $400 for a wall light. Thankfully, I found these rubbed bronze and seed glass carriage house lights on clearance at Lowes. I needed a total of 4 to have all the door lights match, and that’s exactly what they had.
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Although the old garage has Dutch siding, we hope it will blend in just fine once it’s painted the same color as the house.
The old well had a cement cap cover, but I want to have an actual well house over the spot. Not only will it look more like what might have been, but it will also make sure someone can’t get hurt by trying to get into the well for whatever reason. I had seen these while visiting Colonial Williamsburg, and had also seen similar well houses at different historic sites. My dad and I went to work in getting started.
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Getting started on the picket fence! I am using 8′ fence panels from Lowes. Since this has been basically a one-woman job, having fence panels instead of individual pickets has sped up the process. As most of the ground is flat, it looks just as good.
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My sweet mama came by to help
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It took another week or so to get this part of the fence up due to work schedules and the passing of a dear friend. It’s already looking a lot better.
And part of the fence is painted! I found this cast iron “Beware of the Dog” sign in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and ordered a second one to match from eBay. I then painted the signs to match the fence, with the same shade of green that I used on the trim of the house.
Since this picture, my mom and I have finished painting the fence and putting down the landscape fabric.
I am still in the process of trying to locate a six-over-six window that matches the others on the house to replace the one-over-one bathroom window. Once one is located (or made, if it comes down to it), the aluminum will come down, siding will go up, and this side will be restored.
Hopefully this phase will be done soon.