Meet The Back Of Our House

Meet the back of our house or what I refer to as our hidden shame:

Problems: Rotting masonite siding, mismatched original siding, ugly windows that didn't even open, ugly light fixture, door that doesn't match the house and a rotting door jamb and trim.

Nice right?  This is the only part that's not painted.  On the right side we couldn't decide what we were going to do about that siding.  On the left side we knew we definitely wanted to get rid of it.  It's that horrible 80's masonite siding. 

I had started scraping and sanding.  We decided to go ahead and keep this section because part of it is original to the house and the other part has been there for about 60 years.  So even though it doesn't match it's been there long enough to stay.

I started with the far left side of the back.  I had bought this adorable window off craigslist and couldn't wait for it to go in.

So yeah, imagine walking through this every day.  Hideous!

Rotting door jamb

80's masonite siding.  I learned there was a class action lawsuit against this company in the 90's.  Too bad I didn't get to go in on that!

This took less than five minutes to take down. Not surprising to me NO INSULATION. (notice cute dog in bottom right of picture)

On the other side of the wall is ugly paneling.  I began to cut and put up the new siding!  Yay me!  Joe was impressed. Or glad he didn't have to do it. (notice our other cute dog)

In the process the drill slipped and the bit went into my finger nail.  It's still growing out...this was two months ago.

This is the view from inside:

Sprite sitting on the insulation and giving me the look like please sit down and pet me.

A little surprise we found when we took down the paneling. Hello!  Those are holes to the outside!

Here's Joe trying to figure out how we're going to install this.

Putting a frame around it

Success!!

Since this was originally a screened in porch and it's all siding we added the same siding as the outside on the inside.

Painted!!

Ta da!!!!!!

Wow I wish it had been that simple!  We did this over memorial day weekend and then it took a few more weeks to finish after that.  

Coming up: how we replaced the door jamb and installed a new old door.