Vinyl Siding as Seductress

One month ago, I would have cringed at the suggestion that I simply throw some siding on my cottage in Maine. "I love old houses!" would have been the knee jerk reaction. Of course that would have been before having spent hours scraping away the decades of accumulated, crusty paint in what has been dubbed our leisurely old house renovation.

Each time a shard of old, useless paint falls to the ground I feel a bit of triumph. I win! The old paint is no longer there and the precious wood is ready to be primed and treated to the bright, new festive color that still has yet to be named and that probably did not exist at the time the house was built.

On the flip side, each scrape also raises a train of thoughts in the mind: are the scraped knuckles worth it? Could my time be better spent doing something else? Shouldn't I just pay a painter to jump in and do this? Maybe vinyl siding is not so bad in an old house renovation, I muse.

Should you choose not to scrape the peeling old paint from your old house, you are looked at as if you are a negligent parent. The previous homeowner of our cottage didn't scrape, and we are routinely told in a hushed tone, "You know, she never scraped." It's an allegation akin to not having your children brush their teeth or failing to get your dog his shots.

So, we scrape the old house. We scrape the curling paint away prepping the 100-year-old wood for primer and paint. In the end, this will be an effort well worth it, but the process leaves you with plenty of time for thinking, questioning and examining why you like old houses.

The house is great. It was a Sears kit home built beginning in 1908. These little cottages were summer houses built to last, at best, 25 years yet here it stands made from what were once giant redwood trees in the Northwest, back when these were viewed as an endless resource. Over the years its owners have added some insulation, tacked on a laundry room, and that is about it.

Otherwise, the same porch that must have hosted thousands of evening chats continues to welcome people into its gracious little presence. This is why we scrape. This is why we love old homes because they carry a charm and comfort that seems to get lost when you switch from the ambience of wood, even when the paint peels, to flawless vinyl siding.