Be-siding Ourselves

One day a few months back, Steve decided to try to get a better signal with our television antenna. So he got out the ladder and leaned it against the siding of the house. He was met with an unsettling sound: "crunch."

Sometime in our house's past, termites were allowed to run rampant. We had an inspection done when we were purchasing the place that found no active, live infestation. That was the good news. The bad news was the unknown legacy damage lurking in our walls, floors and ceilings.

Some of this damage was found when our contractor's crew was working in the kitchen. They opened up a wall and found that one of the studs was quite literally half-eaten.

When working in the attic, Steve and I (and our contractor's crew) patched quite a bit of old damage. At some point in time, our attic was overrun with termites. While they ate quite a bit of the rafters, the ceiling joists were untouched.

Given all this, we didn't know what we would face in the walls when a portion of our exterior siding was removed to replace the damaged boards. It could potentially have become an enormous project. So we hired our contractor back to take it on.

Siding removed:

In the end we were incredibly lucky. On one wall, they only had to replace one damaged board and all of the structure underneath looked great. On the other wall, one stud (miraculously, only one!) was eaten and needed to be supported with new lumber.

Damaged stud (the half-eaten one in the middle):

For those unfamiliar with lath-and-plaster walls, the white "ooze" showing in those pictures is normal; when plaster is applied on the base of wood strips (lath), it squishes through the spaces between the boards, leaving this look (normally unseen, of course) inside the walls.

Beautiful brand-new bathroom window and replacement siding (with insulation and moisture barrier underneath):

Primed and ready for paint:

We have picked our new main house color (a very soft yellow) and will likely embark on the massive project that is repainting the house later this summer.

As an aside, the rainspout in that last shot is so high up because a rain barrel (moved out of the way for this project) fits underneath it.

It's quite a relief to find that our house is more structurally sound than we feared.