What's under all the layers?

After the hail storm, Eric pulled off some of the layers in the back corner of the house to see what was below the aluminum. Under the vinyl soffits was a layer of painted plywood covering an open soffit of rafter tails and beadboard. It also showed a layer of asbestos siding. Further up you could see the original wood lap siding under the asbestos. Good news?

All of the wood brackets were still there, just completely boxed in with vinyl.

Next he pulled off the aluminum and a bit of the asbestos to see the condition of the siding in a couple spots. Good news...the metal corners were still intact. Bad news...when they put up the asbestos siding they chopped off about an inch of the wood window sills so they could take the siding right up to the outside edge of the trim. More bad news...then when they put up the aluminum siding they chopped off 4-5 more inches of the window sill so they could disgustingly take the aluminum right up to the inside of the window trim - covering up all of the trim and making the house quite boring.

Click here to see a few pictures.

The storm that started it all

Here's the storm that started it all. I never thought I would be so glad to be at work on a Friday night, but since my car was in the parking garage I had no damage...Eric's car is another story. I've heard of as large as 2" diameter hail in the area. We had a broken storm window, lots of dented aluminum siding, large holes in the vinyl siding on the garage and roof damage requiring a new roof. The insurance company proposed replacing the aluminum on the North side of the house only....we decided to rip it all off instead!

Hookin' up my bro

I just added a link to Mike and Laura's website (even though what's going on inside their house puts us to shame!)...it's to the left. I noticed on your to-do list on the site, Mike, that you are supposed to research 'light tunnels'. Don't know if this is what your talking about or not, but check out this link:
http://www.solatube.com/residential.php

We did it!

After looking at lots of beautiful, expensive homes and some expensive crap, we found a place that needed enough work for us to make it our own, but not too much work (laughing to myself right now). It's in a transitional neighborhood (transitional meaning that we think only one neighbor sells drugs) on the Near East side of Indy.

Now, the inside was not georgeous but it had a lot of potential. Only one room had hideous wallpaper - and I mean hideous. We pulled up a corner of carpet, found hardwoods below and hoped for the best condition possible.

Click here to see photos of our home before we touched anything. (warning: don't worry, that's not our furniture!)

We never really liked the outside of the house. I mean, it was clean and everything...it was just boring. When they put the not-so-gleaming white aluminum siding on they covered up all the window/door trim and boxed around all the brackets. Oh, and we just loved the corrugated metal back porch, the decorative columns were just plain amazing. (Hope you notice the sarcasm here.) One big plus...not much mowing and the huge Silver Maple in the front yard (ok, that was two pluses).

Click here to see photos of the exterior in all it's aluminum glory.

For all you complainers out there!

Ok...for everyone who complained about our website before, ("I can't see your pictures, they're too small." "When I click on a picture it doesn't do anything.") here you go. We've started our first blog! I'm not so good at all of this so bear with me while we figure it out. We've decided to start from the beginning...way back when we didn't even plan on doing all of this...way back when we didn't think it would be so much work...way back when we thought it would only take one summer!