It took a little longer than 3 weeks as originally planned, but the vinyl siding finally arrived. Our contractor doesn’t text, so we don’t have any way of getting updates on the progress. We have to wait until we make the 2.5 hour drive down from Lexington and see what we find when we get there.
For several (since October) months, the house has been slowly torn apart. Every time we think something is going to be fixed we end of finding more issues that need to be fixed first. I can’t explain how good it feels to actually see the house being rebuilt.
First visit after vinyl siding installation began
So, I went with white 8″ lap siding. Next to the previous blue siding, the gray looked very light and washed out. Luckily for us, we didn’t need to replace the gray vinyl shakes. However, I was not expecting this harsh transition. I’m still crossing my fingers that once everything is cleaned up and pressure washed that it will look better, but I’m very skeptical.
Still not sure about the gray to white transition…
Fast forward another week and more progress was being made. Maybe with some black or gray shutters installed the shakes will blend in a little better. Either way, for now I’m just happy that we aren’t looking at chipboard.
What do you think about the gray shakes? Should I paint them white? Replace them with the white lap siding?
What’s the best way to make a house maintenance free? Well, truly maintenance free is impossible, but we could make it relatively maintenance free.
Replace all of the Hardie siding with vinyl siding (no painting)
Wrap all of the existing trim boards in aluminum (no painting)
Replace all of the decking with composite decking (no staining or sealing)
Install aluminum railings on the decks (no painting)
These are not easy nor cheap tasks, but really all of them were necessary replacements. Maintenance (almost) free would allow us to spend more time doing what we love there…
All of the Hardie siding had to come off to replace the rotten chipboard and install the necessary flashing. The majority of the trim boards had to be replaced because they were rotten as well. Apparently they were never primed on any side except the front side, so needless to say they were not holding up well. The majority of the deck boards and the decking joists were rotten and were going to be removed. We had already stepped through at least 3 deck boards in the first 6 months of ownership. There were no existing railings on the porches (one of which is 4′ off the ground) and we have 3 small children. The railings are a must.
I have to admit that I do not love vinyl siding. I really don’t even like it. I like wide clapboard siding. You know, the traditional looking stuff. The stuff that was on the house when we bought it. I was having a really hard time getting my head around vinyl and choosing a color that was essentially going to be the same for 25+ years.
I went down to the local Ace Hardware to find out what my options were. I wasn’t really happy with the Traditional or Dutchlap. In case you don’t know the difference (I sure didn’t), here is a graphic to illustrate them.
I asked about options for wider boards and was told that there weren’t any. For those of you that know me well, you know that isn’t an answer that I can accept at face value. So, I went home and did my own research. Guess what I found? Yep, wider vinyl siding. I think I found about 5 companies that make wider vinyl lap siding.
We settled on Ply Gem’s T-Lok Barkwood 8″ single in white. It required a special order of course, so the turnaround time was about 3 weeks. I think our contractor was ready to give up on us. I was about ready to give up as well. Those three weeks felt like an eternity. Did I really need 8″ siding? I could have been happy with traditional 5″, right? I knew I would have regretted that decision. Thankfully I had to pay a 50% deposit, so there really was no turning back after I placed the order, but those three weeks felt like an eternity.
How bad can it be? Very, very bad. You would think that a home inspector would have had some inkling about a potential water issue given the size of this problem. Nope. Nothing. The only issues he noted in his report were related to the lack of handrails on the porches and stairs. Yes, that was probably an issue, but it was also one that we were clearly able to realize on our own.
After several weeks of searching for a contractor to make the repairs on the front room (for a reasonable price), we finally found one that was willing to do the work. The front mudroom of the house was built over a crawl space and the builders actually back filled about 1.5 feet of dirt back to the house and on top of the stone work. All of the 2×4 framing and stone had to be removed and replaced with a low cinder block wall given the grade around the house.
The contractor worked to replace the wood studs with the cinder block wall and then began removing Hardie siding to replace the rotten chipboard behind it. Turns out, the chipboard was rotten basically to the roof line.
We talked about just replacing the rotten wood and going back with new Hardie siding, but I was a little uneasy. I knew that we had potential issues surrounding every window on the house due to the lack of flashing. So, we decided that it was probably best to remove ALL of the Hardie siding. It was not a decision we came to lightly. It was purely motivated by fear. Fear of replacing each section of the house — slowly and expensively.
In my mind I could just see the dollar signs continue to add up. The first contractor we met with quoted us $21,000 for labor only to remove the stone and repair the damaged wood behind it. We figured out the stone replacement was going to run around $25,000 on top of labor. Those were not options we could consider. So, we came up with a different plan.
This is a second home and we would like to spend as much time enjoying our time there as we can. We did not want to spend those precious days working on house maintenance. So, we decided to go maintenance free.
Last July we found the perfect lake house for our family. We had been on the lookout for several months, spending time at various lakes within a few hours home in Lexington.
We spent a weekend last June with friends at Dale Hollow Lake on the Kentucky/Tennessee border and fell in love with the lake. It was beautiful, clean, and most importantly not crowded. One lazy evening I opened the trusty Zillow app and did a search for nearby properties for sale. An amazing house popped up as a FSBO. It looked fantastic from the pictures, had the space we were looking for, a lake view, it was on 4 acres, and it was a great price. I immediately texted the number and asked if it was possible to see it that weekend. To my disappointment, I did not receive a reply.
We went back home and later the next week I decided to try and call the number. You know, just in case they didn’t get the text that was never responded to. Someone picked up the phone and said, “Bank of Cumberland. How may I help you?”
I was a little confused, but explained that I was calling about a house I saw listed on Zillow. The lady informed me that it was a bank owned property and transferred me to the Vice President. He gave me a little information about the house and we scheduled to see it that Sunday.
My husband and I drove the 2.5 hours down (sans kiddos) and spent about 20 minutes at the house. It was perfect for us and a great price at that. There was no negotiating, the VP told us they would only take less than $5,000 below asking so that’s what we offered. They accepted the offer the next day.
House on the Hill in July 2018
We knew the house needed some TLC. It was built in 2008, but the bank had it for the last three years or so and it sat vacant. Even from these pictures you can see that the trim needed repainting, but all in all everything appeared to be pretty minor (especially given some of the other houses we had looked at).
We spent most of last summer just enjoying the house and fixing up the inside a bit. Mostly painting, installing shelving, etc. Around the fall, hubby stepped on the top step of the porch and went right through a deck board. Luckily he’s quick on his feet and grabbed onto on of the columns. What we found underneath was quite concerning. It wasn’t just a rotten deck board, but all of the stair stringers were rotten as well.
The builder placed the wood directly on the ground. Worse than that though, they actually dug out an area for the stringers about 6″ deep that did nothing except hold water. We knew we had several other boards on the three decks that were also rotten, including the ramp of the side deck.
Hubby decided that it was time to find out how big of a problem we had so he started with removing the ramp on the side porch. We uncovered LOTS more problems. Same issues with the decking being directly to the ground, but apparently the builders did not flash anything. Not the windows, doors, transition between Hardie board and stone, not behind the seams in the Hardie board – absolutely nothing was flashed. They didn’t even caulk the seams in between the siding board ends. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they also put chipboard behind the stone all the way to the ground, which just soaked water up the walls.
So, for 10 years this house has just been seeping and soaking up water behind its beautiful facade. All that water turns the insides into this…
We are still in the process of replacing the exterior of the house. Luckily for us the interior construction was much better than the exterior. The house is actually inhabitable and we have been able to enjoy it most weekends.
I’ll post an update soon on what we are doing to resolve the issues.
We began our journey about 8 years ago in a little cottage home in Lexington, KY. I created a blog so that our family and friends could share in the journey with my husband and I to turn our first house into a true home. The blog I had, Cottage 38 North, feels like a lifetime ago now. It actually took me several minutes of searching to even remember how to get to it. I’m honestly a terrible blogger in terms of keeping a schedule and even taking progress pictures of projects. However, I find it therapeutic to share our adventures and so I begin again.
It profiled some of our DIY projects in that first house and then our subsequent adventure of moving to Alabama. We had a home built in a great neighborhood there, which is also home to one of my favorite bloggers, Layla of The Lettered Cottage. We eventually moved back to Lexington, KY and bought a 1960s ranch that we completely renovated. It has served us well for the last five years, but our now family of five has outgrown it and we have decided to move on.
This site was born out of my inability to find information online for DIY projects for those Gen Z homes…otherwise known as the homes built from 1995 – 2010. I have no idea how to turn this type of home into something warm and inviting, but I’m going to give it my best shot.
Our Gen Z House
Below is our evolution in terms of home exteriors…
The cottage (home #1)The craftsman (home #2)The Ranch (home #3)
I will do my best to post regularly and hopefully you all will share with me your best tips and tricks on bringing this home to the current decade.
Gen Z House 