Sometimes it’s an attention to detail that can really add that something extra to a project. Noah, our youngest son, came home from the Army and after a season of rest, has spent time with his dad this summer, installing siding on our new “old house”. Since it was such an old girl with solid oak boards, he insisted on hand-nailing each piece of siding instead of using the faster nail guns.
Here is a shot from the back second story window.
All through the summer’s heat, he has faithfully come to work when he was not attending summer college classes. The hardest part was constantly moving the scaffolding. Second story work is more dangerous if you don’t take the time to properly set up all the framework of the scaffolding using the proper cross-bracing. When Noah started, he quickly set it up and didn’t care that is was swaying in the wind. His dad put his foot down and let Noah know that since he was paying him wages, he was in charge and he wanted him to have no accidents. So the necessary time would be taken to always set up the scaffolding with all the bracing intact and it would be ground-leveled out each time.
Some days it seem to take forever to get the section of scaffolding leveled out on the uneven ground, especially when a wheel or two would sink into soft silty soil; but Noah and his Dad persisted.
It takes special tools like the break to complete a siding job. It’s a long sharp tool that can custom bend rolled white metal into the soffit needed to cover overhangs, or as in this photo, they used it to save the antique pressed tin roof that I so dearly love. The flat roof was given a new deck and barrier to keep the rain and snow from ruining it until Jim can get to it once we are on site.
It took Noah many days of work to tear off a section the worn out wooden siding and replace it with insulation and the new siding. We so wanted to save the original clapboards but they were just exhausted and refused to hold paint. We tried different treatments, they just wouldn’t work.
Noah loved to tease me about saving the old clapboards. I kept asking him if he remembered to save me some of the boards and he would laugh and tell me, “Yes, Blondie, I saved that nasty old wood for you, right there on the burn pile.” (He has been calling me Blondie since he was a teenager. It’s a term of endearment so please don’t take offense.) He kept saying he was burning all that junk-wood with any old paint on it to protect my future grandchildren. While it’s a great point when working with any house old that might still have lead paint lurking, he loves me and did finally show me a stack of clapboards he had saved for me to use to make birdhouses for my family.
Since I had been raised in great poverty, as a young mother I decided that my children would never have to work as hard as I have to on the farm. When Josiah was about nine years old, I realized that I was doing my children a great disservice by not giving them the gift of a strong work ethic, so Jim and I had a talk and we shifted gears. The first year the boys learned to work. The second year, they learned to like to work. The third year, they learned to think ahead to the next step. The fourth year, they had to come up with how to plan and compete a project. It has proven to be one of the things I am most thankful for changing as a parent. It has been a great pleasure to give our sons the gift of enjoying a hard days’ work.
So we are making progress, but the attention to detail is what happened when they put up the guttering. For some reason that little detail made the entire house look great. I will share the “details” with you soon in a posting on moving water away from a structure. Enjoy your family today! Kiss the crabby one first! Be blessed! Annie May
