Fishscale gables!

I started the siding removal by taking off the aluminum siding from the gable and the eaves since it had the easiest reach, the other gables would require a tall ladder! Once the aluminum was removed, the original fishscales, beadboard eaves and bold bead and cove molding were allowed to see the light of day again!.

I found the paint to be nearly perfect on it - considering it was last painted in 1923. (from the history of the house that I had uncovered)

I also discovered upon removing the siding that the woodwork is sadly not original, (the paint shadow shows much more ornate posts) which I had suspected due to the wide grain lumber that it was made out of. That it seems to have gone missing or been replaced at some point.

Along with uncovering the true beauty of the original gables, I also discovered the date the siding was put on February 8, 1983 - this is something that nobody has seen in over 31 years!

The residue is from wasps and other insects finding a home under the siding! When I removed the siding and the "trailerboard" from the eaves, hundreds of dead bugs rained down! Along with cobwebs, maple "twizzlers" and just about every kind of icky debris imagineable!!

Thank goodness I decided to tackle this in February, as I found a few live wasps still living there!! Surviving the winters by living under the siding (ah the joys of siding...) They were too stunned from the sudden exposure to cold to attack me and then slowly died. 

From the paint shadow one can determine that the gables were 3 different colors - dark green, gray and then finally white.


We have 5 different fishscale patterns, rectangular, diamond, teardrop, "puzzlepiece" and square.

Thankfully, the front face of our house (just within the porch) has escaped the nightmare of siding so we know exactly what our crown molding pattern looks like!

So this is what we can hope to expect our home to look like again after we remove the old paint, replace missing architectural elements and repaint!