Now I'm sure the demo will never end. Today we pulled the siding and
trim off of the front entry.
Here's a before shot. It looks pretty good from this distance, but up
close it was a little rotted and not so attractive.
Now one during. Note the funky double wall construction. There is
actually another 2x4 wall behind that black fiberboard. The box for
the front porch light was just hanging on the siding and the siding
was just directly attached to the outer wall. Hmm, seems like this
wasn't very well planned. Given other evidence in the basement, I'm
sure that the front entry was not originally planned to be built this
way.
And after. We had a scary moment when I was pulling some siding off
and realized that the herringbone brick panel on the garage side of
the front door was moving. It seems it is not really attached to
anything, so we'll need to be careful with that. Let's just say that
having it fall over and crumble would not be good. Once we are done,
I think it will be held in place well enough by the trim boards. At
least then it won't really be possible to pull on it.
Not surprisingly, we found a few unwelcome critters behind one of the
trim boards by the chimney.
By the end of the day, we had some new framing in the openings along
with some insulation and new OSB on the exterior. The new framing and
OSB is not structural, it is just there to give some backing to the
new siding since I'd rather not install that directly on the studs of
the outer wall.
We removed the window in the front entry and put a temporary cover over
the hole. Once we have a new window selected we can reframe the
opening.
We were able to get one peice of siding up and some house wrap over
everything. Here's a shot after the first panel was up but before we
had finished the house wrap.
Before we can do more we have to get more siding and trim
boards.
We put up three pieces of siding and framed in the rough opening for
the new window, again insulating in the outer wall. It went fairly
smoothly though we did accidentally put some marks on the siding with
the ladder (it needs another coat of paint anyway) and we were
interrupted by some rain. We can't do much more siding until we get
the new window (it has been ordered, but may take two weeks to
arrive).
I was also able to get the front porch light up and wired again. It's
been months since we had a working light here, so it's a nice bit of
progress, even if we will have to take it down to put the trim up and
finish painting the siding.
We put some insulation in the front entry way and reframed the door
opening. It was originally framed with sideways 2x4s, making a very
thin wall. Ugh. This will make the doorway a little more normal.
The door needed to come out anyway because it had apparently been cut
off when there was another layer of flooring in the entry. Now that
it's gone, the gap under the door was more than an inch and the trim
around the door had also been hacked off. We'll lower the door to fix
that when we reinstall it.
We also put up some sheetrock before we stopped for the night. It's
definitly nice to be making some forward progress and not just doing
demolition all the time.
After many months without a light in the front entry area, I've
finally replaced it, more or less. I installed a new ceiling box and
a bare bulb, but at least we have light again, and a switch. I also
pulled out the last bit of plaster that we plan to replace in the
entry way and put in a new outlet. Now we can get on with some more
insulating and drywall, but we won't be able to finish all of that
until we have the new window installed. Maybe it will happen by the
end of the month.
We got a few more holes patched and covered with a first coat of joint
compound, including the big opening between the dining room and
kitchen.
We picked up the window Friday afternoon, so today we installed it and
finished putting up the rest of the siding around the front entry.
The first coat of paint is on the trim boards now. We should have
a second coat on them soon and then they'll be ready to install.
