1900 Victorian Home Restoration: Painting the front of the house and siding removal!

I finally painted the front face of the house along the wrap around porch! It was a big project and I got it done in about 2 weeks. We had a lot of rainy weather, or it probably would have been a little quicker. But I worked all day whenever there was a dry day.

Before I continue with this photo-heavy post, I want to state that the house was sided in at least 3 different jobs.

As you probably noticed from my posts on restoring that one area in the back, it had all the mouldings hacked off to the max, and the sill corners completely cut off and a lot of measurement scribbles were made on the wood.

The rest of the house was done, which involved moderate sill corner cutting, or sometimes as in the case on the front, not at all with minimal amount of mouldings removed, mostly limited to just the crown moulding over the windows. Why they couldn't have done this on the back, I have no clue. Also the use of styrofoam over the boards, under the siding was used on these sides. Also they used more normal looking steel nails on these sides, on the back they used a very irritating type of nail with a very thin head that tends to break off when you try to remove the nail, I'm glad the rest of the house doesn't have this type. The last thing done was the gables (except for the back one) and those were done by yet another person who didn't cut off the sill corners, nor remove any moulding and did not use any styrofoam. The Latter are the ones shown with the date written (Between 8 and 18th of February 1983) and signed by the worker.

Before I was able to take off the siding I had to remove the shutters. These were a mix of Phillips and Torx (star bit) screws. Done with powertools, and very long screws. A major pain with blisters for me since I don't own power tools.

Personally I do not care for shutters, we didn't have any originally either.

I recommend reading on here for learning appropriate shutter usage.
http://www.oldhouseguy.com/shutters/

I used oil paint. I am a vehement hater of plastic paints and while I realize this is sadly all that is available easily in a lot of areas. I refuse to use it, it is simply not paint. Oil paint actually adheres to what you are painting. Unlike "latex" that sits on top like a bubble and when it's popped it all peels up in huge sheets.

I've heard "that's only if you didn't do any prepwork" I did hours and hours of prepwork, it still peeled up. What a joke. Use oil if you can it is so much better.

All in all, 28 hours went into what you see below, that's just for the painting and priming, not to mention the time spent removing shutters, filling holes, pulling nails, sanding, scraping and cleaning.

I did not strip all the paint off the house, as I have discussed earlier, my old paint is in far to excellent condition and simply won't budge so it was apparently safe to paint over.

A before photo

Before photo again, driveway side, sorry for the dark image

Started to pry off siding, boards underneath in amazing condition (north side)

Shutter removed

And another one, notice the green paint had faded and in just 3 years turned a noticeably different color from the unexposed area.

The very irritating thing is, that they actually took off the shutters to paint the siding green 4 yrs ago (before we bought the house) the shutters date back to the siding job on the then white siding. The people who did all the stuff before were huge fans of half-assed jobs I can't believe they actually took off the shutters to paint. Also the shutters are painted, they are black vinyl painted dark green!

The worst part is some of the screws were stripped, and so they cut the heads off and often times drilled a new hole right next to the old one.

paper wasp nest, oh the joys of siding.

Some shots of the old paint

Screw hole from the shutters.

Freshly uncovered

What have we here?

A massive mud dauber nest hiding under the siding, I found many of these, along with paper wasp nests. they go really far behind the siding.

Removed downstairs level shutters.

This is why I never use screws, they split the wood. Filling all these holes was a huge pain. Also in some areas I had to pry out and reverse screw the broken off screws left in the wood. in some cases where I couldn't I had to simply bend them until they broke at the surface level.

Marks where the shutters expanded and contracted and dug into the wood.

What a world of difference! Looks 10000x better already.

The Windows actually have casings once more and don't appear sunken in and ugly. The walls with a frieze board along the top looks so much better than the siding look of before where the "boards" go up to the eaves.

Interestingly, something was over this window, maybe an awning or something it was put on after the original grey paint layer, but before they painted the house white in 1923. It was removed when they put siding so the original paint color was preserved.

A couple of close ups. It is very similar to the color of grey I ended up finding since I learned that paint matching is a scam.

Looks like it was tarred before and I will have to redo the flashing in copper. This is why I really hate crap like siding, then when future work is done, it is only done to the siding level, not actually to the wood level.

A cut sill corner done by a more careless worker than usual almost cut the clapboard in half!

View of the overhangs over the windows on the north bedroom. They have a lot of detail, including beadboard and bead and cove moulding along the join between the frieze and the beadboard eaves.

Upon removing the very last shutter I discovered a little surprise.

That's right, a bat living under the shutter!! I waited until night and let it fly away before removing the shutter.

Another view without siding.

Front midway "After" pic.

Looks so much nicer without shutters!

Again, you can see the the discoloration and the marks the shutters left in the wood.

Screw hole exposing all the paint layers.

Some of the foam I was talking about earlier.

Boards in great shape underneath!

The opposite side, they actually left the sill corners here, no idea why they couldn't have left them for the other side too! Note the sill corners painted green to match the siding. as if a sill is a thing to hide!

This window had no awning or anything extra over it like the other side did.

Some more shots on a day with better lighting.

What a beauty!

East side

After a lot of scraping, and cleaning off the boards, I got a primer layer down.

Finally had a chance to get a ladder up there and strip the aluminum trailerboard off of the eaves.

Beautiful 13.5" beadboard eaves! I'm going to be removing all my guttering as all it does is attract mold growth, rot and it blocks my bead and cove moulding. Also according to my research online, houses with wide eaves such as these, don't require guttering. And as I covered in my gutter removal posts, the gutters were causing other problems as well.

I did this between painting, thus the dark grey clapboard body color, however the still primed trim.

If you look closely at the end of the eaves on this picture, and I had neglected to take a better photo, my beadboard was replaced by warped, rotting plywood when it makes a 90° right turn!!?!? Aaaah!?! Thankfully I found beadboard online a while back when I discovered the sagging rotted section due to a combination of siding and gutters. So I guess when I finally do buy some, I have to buy a lot more as I found more areas like this. Why are my eaves so F$%*ed up?? That's the one part I expected to be in perfect shape.

Waiting for a white coat on the trim.

Ah, she's a beauty, finally done!!

East side shot

A "after" shot. Shutters gone, door sill painted correct color of trim instead of porch color and outlet cover replaced with a more complimentary one.

The Before shot

The original colors once more, very beautiful!

If one will notice, I painted the Victorian way, where the color of the body is painted on the sides of the trim and only the front facing sections are painted white. This is the way it was originally done, however it seems almost nobody knows this. 99% of houses I see are painted the "white board" "grey board" way where the sides of the trim are also white. This is historically incorrect. Some say the historic way is "lazy" however I found that this method works extremely well for using the painting method known as cutting in which frees you from using painter's tape (which doesn't even work with brushes anyway)

I didn't get to paint the eaves or the frieze board yet. but at least from afar it isn't too noticeable. I would have preferred to get an off white but one wasn't available.