Pulling Down Vinyl And Restoring Old Shakes

troyamuso

This time I accually have a question related to the house I live in. The house is a 1947 Cape. I've lived in it for 7 yrs. It has vinyl siding over shake shingles. I believe the vinyl has been on the house since (according to the neighbors) the 80's. I'm thinking about pulling the vinyl down and restoring the old shakes. I don't want to reside the house since I may be doing a major renovation in a few years at which time I'll probably reside the whole house. I thought this may be a lower budget way to get away from the ugly light blue vinyl for now. All of the window casments are wraped in aluminum. It all just looks bad. In all honestly it looks like a 1980s 1-800 vinyl job. Anyway, I want to pull it down and either paint or solid stain the shakes. I've pulled the siding up in different areas of the house and it looks like the shakes are in pretty good shape. Can anyone give me any advice or insight into this.
Thanks, I appriciate your input. TA

Patrick

EHHHHHHH Good luck theres gonna be several thousand nail holes to fill, the window trim was probably hacked up with a sawzall where it meets the sills, not to mention the sill noses are probably all cut off. the drip caps over the windows are gonna be all hacked off and theres probably gonna b vent holes cut haphazzardly into the soffits If the siding is in decent shape and you just want a quick fix for the color why don't you paint it to get you by temporarily...

troyamuso

Why would all the saw hacking to the trim have accured. I don't do vinyl so I'm not up on the installation process.

Patrick

Most installers usually undercut the casing where it meets the sill so that the aluminum slips right under the casing. We usually don't do it too carefully sometimes cutting a 1/4" gap between the bottom of the casing and the top of the sill. Also if the sill horns extend out past the casing we usually cut them flush. And on the soffits for ventilation we normally cut large holes in them