Caulk, Caulk, and more Caulk

Last week was a busy week in the life of the Martin House.  Our goal was to remove the damaged siding and replace with new siding so that we can get the house closed in before it starts getting cold.  Because it was Thanksgiving week we were able to get everything done on our list of to do's!  

Below are several pictures so you can see the progress.  Most of the siding we replaced was at the bottom of the house.  All of the corner boards were replaced to tighten up the house.  One of the funny things that we noticed was how much caulk was under the corner boards.  We literally had to use the hammer to pull it off.  I'm sure with a house this old there were a lot of breezes getting through at any given time.   

The two pictures above are the back of the bathroom with the new siding.  We put insulation in, took off all of the siding that was larger in size, and used the matching smaller siding. 

On Friday, after four days of working on the rest of the house, we tackled the back wall.  Currently this is a bedroom but when the house was originally built it was the kitchen.  After much consideration, we have decided to move the kitchen back to this room.  This means that the back windows have to be removed and replaced with smaller windows to accommodate cabinets at the standard 36" height.

The back wall is the one place where we have our work cut out for us because of some bowing to that wall.  When we took the windows out we thought it would release some of the pressure to the wall but the wall was actually super sturdy.  We will still have to build a wall inside to help secure the wall for the new windows.

The windows we removed were single pane glass windows with the old weight & pulley system.  When we pulled the windows out we found four steel (we think) weights on rope that was used to raise and lower the windows.

Our next step is to frame up the inside of the back wall so we can secure the wall to it, frame in for the new windows, and get ready to paint.  Windows have been ordered for the whole house which we will replace but we want to paint before we put them in----don't have to be so neat then!  Just spray away....

More to come......