What I Did With My Spring Vacation

Meet the Dinkle House. The Dinkle house is that which the Babilonia clan calls home. From the time we bought it in 1997 until this March, it looked more or less like this:


But time came for paint, and it was decided, and rightfully so, that it needed a little more love than just a coat of paint. We decided on new siding and insulation. Piece of cake.



Here are pal Chuck and I tearing off the old sheathing. My advice in retrospect would be to not try this at home. It's a miserable business in many important ways, but I'm very lucky to have a bunch of folks in my life willing to help a guy who's gotten himself in over his head. Special thanks to Chuck, Karen, Joel, Tom, Steve and Bob. Won't soon forget it.

Once the tearoff was over, it looked a little naked:


You could see all the plumbing and electrical from the street. And hear a lot more of the street from inside the house. Then came the Insulators:


Blown-in fiberglass. Rated at about R16, which is quite an improvement over the R6 or so that we had with the previous material. These guys showed up at ten past eight, were gone by noon and came in $70 under bid. Wish all construction went that way.

Plywood sheathing:


Foam board:


and finally, spanky new fiberglass siding:


This stuff is the new darling of architects everywhere, or so I am told. Six months on it still looks great and is holding up well, but we'll see whether it lasts. All the windows are aluminum clad, so it won't need a lot of maintenance. A little soon to tell whether the insulation has made a big difference, but the weather has turned cold...