Old houses, oh my......

My house was built in 1904. Time and money has kept me on a schedule and finally I am going to rework the south side of the house. I have kept it painted but the siding has been a mess for years.




I started to tear off the old siding which is its original cedar siding. It is split, covered with some of the very original old paint and layers of others from all these years. A lot of the nails have fallen out and the boards fit so loosely. I can not save any of it. Under this siding is the deteriorating tar-like paper which had shrunk, leaving gaps to allow air to enter into the wall. The house is actually sheeted with one inch thick wood, unlike the artificial wood sheeting that they use today.
This is not the original window in the house, as that was a long narrow, double-hung window. I still had a few of them around but have replaced them myself. This window was probably put in during the 60's, in which they were suppose to be better. It is the type of window that was installed in ranch styled houses back then. They were not better as the windows fit loosely and the aluminum storms which were promoted back then as modern, but were not energy efficient. Some say you can just take them off and you may loose a .2 r-value.
Other problems with this window was that the 60's installer didn't line it up with the window above or center it on the outside wall. If you look at the vertical white tape on the window, you can see what center of the wall is suppose to be. The window is off almost 6 inches.





Because it is an old house, the majority of the nails used to build it were the square nails. I gave you two views to hopefully let you see what they look like. The most unusual thing about their design, even with it's chiseled tapered square shape is that it doesn't come to a sharp point. There is a square blunt end on it. I am sure that when the new design of nail came out that carpenters were very happy. Below is a passage that I picked up of the net.

Hand-forged nails were the first manufactured nails, and they date back to Biblical times. As people first used hewn beams, timbers, planks, and whole logs to build with, the early hand-made nails were spikes. With the development of the split wood shingle, nails of about 1" long came into use. When sawyers, and then sawmills, began cutting dimension lumber, the sizes and varieties of nails greatly expanded. Thus, over time, nails developed in different sizes, shapes, and used different heads to fasten lumber and wood.

I picked up the new window today at The Home Depot. It is five foot wide and four foot high. It will match the style of the windows throughout the rest of the house. It probably is too modern but keeping them all the same with a clean design makes it look good. It is a fixed glass window, so it will be a tight fitting window and the room will warm up in comparison to what the old window was doing to the room. I will be replacing the siding with a wood product as I have done on the other three sides of the house. I will install a vapor barrier product under the siding which is a breathable plastic, tyvek, which will warm the house. It will be a relief to get this done. I will keep you posted but I really won't show you how bad it looks, the before, but I will show you the after picture. Thanks for reading......