Week 21 – Joe

While the work continues on the hvac and plumbing, Amy and I have been busy preparing for new windows!  If you recall, the front gable of our house had been butchered with a gigantic fan and vent opening.

That room will be Lucy’s room so it needs to have a window that complies with egress requirements.  Same goes for Aiden’s room, which currently only has a tiny window opening.  The bathroom has a window the same size as Aiden’s window.  In addition, we want to add a window to the highest gable to provide light to the upstairs common area.  This all seems straight forward enough, but as we have come to expect, it involves research, demo, framing, calling a guy, meeting a guy, meeting with the architect, decisions, and then….  waiting.  In addition, this part requires approval from our local historic preservation committee because it deals with the exterior of a house in a historic district.

Before anything could begin, we needed to remove the existing siding to the four gables that would eventually have new windows.  The exterior of the 1st floor was originally covered in fake brick asbestos material, but the previous owner had already removed it.

The 2nd floor is still covered with asbestos shingles.  I guess we should be thankful for all of that because it is the reason our wood siding is still in such good shape.  Our goal last weekend was to remove the asbestos shingles so we could gather evidence of what was once there and also clear the way for larger new bedroom windows openings to be cut.

We started with the front gable.  It was the easiest to access. First, we had to get up there and remove the vent opening for the fan.  That proved to be pretty straight forward.  It just involved removing some tiles, prying off a few pieces of wood, and then unscrewing the vent.

We were able to move the fan off of it’s pedestal (actually, we just broke the pedestal) and cleared the way.

Side note – when our two year old, Lucy, first saw her room after we removed the vent (leaving a gaping hole) she solemnly declared that her room was broken.  She now says that every time she sees it.  Or whenever she feels like telling you about her room.

Once we had the fan removed we went to work on the siding.  The reoccurring advice we have read and heard about asbestos siding is to try not to break the tiles and to make sure you wear a respirator.  If you read guidelines on how to “officially” remove asbestos it involves full body suites and, in my mind, some type of set up like the end of the movie, E.T.

 

I think everyone that rehabs a home has to come to terms with the potential toxins you are going to face.  Usually a good respirator and common sense will do just fine.  Although, I have to admit that every little cough I develop makes me wonder if it is a cold or some lung disease I have acquired.  We are lucky that we are not LIVING in the house and we are pretty careful about what we bring in to our current house.

We did the best we could, but the siding would not come off without some breakage. There wasn’t much to be excited about with this gable.  Underneath the asbestos is just the actual side of the house.  Not even old siding.

 

It did allow us to see clear evidence of the windows that had been removed and filled in to create the opening for the fan.

The next goal was to remove the asbestos from the highest gable.  This was the next easiest because we could access it from a valley in the roof line.  We actually tried to do this part the week before, but the roof was so hot that it was impossible to sit or kneel.

 

We were excited to immediately discover the original scallop siding underneath the asbestos!

The siding is in good shape and will just need a little scraping and painting. We were also able to prove what we already assumed, that there was originally a decent sized window in that gable.

We will definitely use that opening for new a window.  That window will bring much needed light to the area at the top of the stairs.

The last task was to remove the siding from the gables on the side of the house.  This was going to be a little difficult because it involved using a ladder.  It ended up not being as difficult as originally thought, except for the fact that to reach the higher tiles the ladder had to be extended all the way and I had to stand on the 2nd highest ladder rung.  Still, not too bad…  just had to be a little more careful.

[Edit from Amy: Upon inspecting this picture I would like to motion for the previous use of the word SOME to be reconsidered when describing how many asbestos tiles were broken (ahem…shattered) in this process.]

In the end we decided to only remove what was needed for the windows.  We figure we will use a scaffold when we paint and that we can just remove the remainder of the siding with the aid of the scaffold.  We still need to remove the asbestos from the back of the house, but it didn’t have anything to do with the new windows or the historic preservation committee so we bumped it down the priority list.

Once we were able to see evidence of the original windows we could get everything together for the proposal to the preservation committee.  Our architect has completed the sketches of what the gables will look like with the new windows.  The front gable will certainly have a huge impact on the curb appeal of the house.

 

We are also looking forward to seeing how much more light there will be on the 2nd floor.

Completely unrelated to windows, look what was found in the crawl space…

 

The crate has “The Polk Milk Company” engraved on the side.  A quick Google search revealed interesting information and a great article by Cottage Home resident Joan Hostetler.

Meanwhile, we have been busy coordinating and consulting efforts with the hvac and plumbing as well as tracking down information about insulation and drywall.  I have also been working on the windows most nights in our basement.  Every once in a while we wander into the appliance section of the hardware store and try to narrow down our search for appliances.

Next, we need to decide what type of windows to get….  Apparently that is not as simple as I had hoped.  So many things to consider!