The Renter’s Home & Self-Improvement Guide

“I need to do something about this siding.” 

It might have been a warm spring night, but that line sent a chill down my spine.  I’ve done my share of home projects...  I’ve helped put on 2 roofs, painted countless homes, lay inverted on a tar & rock roof painting the underside of eaves, crawled into attics to gaze into heaps of electrical wires resembling a plate of spaghetti... I’ve smashed a finger between a 2-ton boulder and a cabin ‘improving’ the summer camp of my youth... I’ve patched the bottom of a swimming pool, tried (in vain) to figure out a water well repair job... I’ve inhaled fiberglass, dust & the bio-toxins of urban decay... I’d even already helped my landlord build a porch/deck on the back of my current place.  I’d seen enough to know that when you do stuff like tear up a floor, or break into a wall, or tear off siding, the only thing that awaits you beneath is literally unimaginable misery.  Like a home-improvement lotto scratch-off from hell, you never know what problem is waiting to show itself, or how much extra time and money will be tacked on to your project’s plan. 

But there was no denying it.  Siding that old needs one thing: to be replaced.  This is not a Navy job where another coat of gray paint for the next inspection is the solution.  Termites and hail had both chipped & munched away at the viability of the home’s walls, not to mention the foundation.  The property is on a hill sloping down toward the back of both buildings, so every little slippage has consequences.  Leaving it alone was a recipe for disaster, so I asked the question.

“Who you gonna hire?” 

“I think we can do it ourselves.” 

It was easy for me to admit a job like that was way over my head, but eventually we agreed that together & with a couple friend’s help we could pull it off.  We plunged into preliminary inspections a couple days later... you know, just to see.  The first thing we found was that termites had compromised cedar post support columns in both buildings, and done so in covert, terroristic fashion by boring unseen straight up through the bottom of the posts.  Seeing that the posts were now free-standing beneath their beams, we simply removed them... twisted them out by hand & marveled at the cone-shaped hollowness of the now useless supports.  Goddamn bugs. 

In the few spots where we first tore away rotted siding on the main house, we discovered rotten support joists, mostly due to water damage... which of course only served to soften the wood for easier consumption by the bugs.  We also discovered that any semblance of wood framing at the base of both building’s back walls had long since dissolved into the ground, and for awhile we couldn’t tell what the lower siding was actually adhered to.  On further inspection it became clear that siding in those spots was nailed directly into the cedar post supports... what was unclear was what was holding up the wall of the house. 

Other fun discoveries just flowed like puke from a sick child.  The building’s walls were completely un-insulated, so tearing off the siding revealed a layer of half-eaten tar paper, a festival of bug crap & carcasses, and the drywall.  Nothing Else.  Better yet, when we finally took the first step and moved to replace the siding on just the front of my place (which needed it most), we discovered that tearing off the siding above the ceiling line completely ventilated the attic space... no wall or insulating material of any kind was behind the siding up there.  Then we learned our first hard lesson in reading instructions... after getting the new wooden siding up & sealing the cracks, we noticed the paint didn’t seem to be covering the sealant.  And upon reading the label more carefully, we’d used sealant that in fact cannot be painted.

We hatched a plan to re-use as much of the old siding as possible.  What was not eaten or rotted was actually very high-quality stuff.  Old siding like that is tapered, and milled to about 1.2-inch thickness, nearly impossible to find today & very expensive to have custom-milled.  But after some lab testing, we confirmed that the old paint was indeed lead-based, and if any significant stripping and re-using was to take place, it would have to be done with some not-so-insignificant accounting for disposal of the toxic lead paint and dust generated.  Subsequently the ‘save the siding’ plan has pretty much been tabled for further discussion & implementation (convert the garage to a sealed work chamber to plane the wood... big Maybe on that one). 

But after completing the one wall on my place, we were confident enough in our abilities that we decided we’d take a shot at replacing the siding on the entire main house with HardiePlank.  Not only is the stuff super-strong against hail, you never have to paint it. 

Say ‘Yes!’ to never having to paint. 

But the whole ‘no painting’ thing is completely balanced by the insane techniques one must use to work with HardiePlank.  It’s a blended concrete product that weighs WAY more than you think when you look at its 12-foot lengths.  Anything that heavy should not bend so badly that if you try to carry it flat, it will break.  Snaps like a twig, in fact.  There is no stacking this stuff and carrying 4 or 5 pieces at a time.  Anything that useful should not require a filter mask & capture bag to cut, but it does, and woe to anyone that inhales that crap... way dangerous!

Over 3 or 4 weekends, we managed to complete one back wall of the main house and a bit around the corner toward their back door... cutting and flashing around existing concrete steps, cutting around multiple windows, a door, the alarm, and some electrical.  At one point, as some siding was removed from just under the roof line, my poor landlord was showered with an active carpenter ant colony that had set up residence between the roof’s plywood and shingles. 

It was grueling, exhausting work.  So much so, that before we went any farther, we paused to ‘wait out’ the hottest part of last summer.  And during that time, we basically threw in the towel.  Calculating exactly how much of our weekends – and lives – we’d need to put in to complete the entire house was downright depressing. 

We figured out we’d crossed the line between home improvement and home construction.  No matter what the books at Home Depot tell you, there is a point where one really does need to chill out and hire a professional.  So the pros completed the main house, and they did a marvelous job.  Soffits and flashing on a place like that can be tricky, but they pulled it off.  They even managed to work around what we’d completed without tearing it all down & re-doing it, and only had a couple of criticisms on how we had done it. 

Here’s where our story turns.  To accomplish the install of the plank on the main house, the pros needed to pour a concrete base around the front and sides of the house for 2 reasons; to give the plank a solid base to rest on, and to facilitate drainage around the house instead of underneath it.  And since the new siding is about to be installed on my place, a similar concrete support wall needed to be installed.  There was absolutely no discussion of even attempting that task ourselves.  The front wall of my place was sitting on top of what can best be described as a pile of limestone rocks that once resembled a ‘wall’, and it would be a relief to see professionals demo that and replace it with a nice slab O’ concrete. 

So about a month ago we found ourselves in the courtyard again, enjoying drinks, and eyeballing the concrete porch outside my front door. (we also eyeballed it from underneath the house while we were digging the aforementioned holes).

“Ya know, we gotta bash that thing out to make room for the concrete wall they have to pour.” 

Didn’t seem like an overwhelming task at the time... the porch was 12ft x 6ft with inch-thick ceramic tile on top & on the sides down to the first steps.  It was shaping up to be classic demolition, something we relished.  Nothing like getting a couple friends over to bash the crap out of something.  But... we decided we’d do this ourselves using only sledgehammers. 

Sometimes, when educated men make calculations about blue-collar construction work, they shouldn’t.  As the first few sledge strikes rained down on the tile, it was a rude awakening.  Sometimes, the hammer would just bounce right back at us, doing no damage whatsoever to the tile.  It was like the home improvement gods were trying to smack us with the hammers.  We learned this was no modern, cheap tile... this was old-school stuff.  A solid inch thick, like a Kevlar shield to the 5 inches of concrete surface we were trying to break through.

Clearly, we were being mocked. 

As satisfying as the first few swings of the hammer were, we had no intention of spending 2 days of brutalizing swings just to demo this porch.  Within 20 minutes of starting, plans changed to include renting a jackhammer.  The neighbors must have thought all hell was breaking lose, and that was just from us grunting in Tim Allen-style man-recognition.  Ladies, you may insert whatever phallic joke you care to here, it is more than appropriate.  The porch never stood a chance, but it did put up a good fight.  Operating that bad boy on an angle when we were attacking the walled edges was much more dangerous than we anticipated, and really hard on both the legs and back.  Despite the pain, it was actually pretty fun, but still a task I can’t see myself doing on a daily basis.  Ever.

By the end of that very exhausting day, I had a pit of busted concrete chunks & rebar beneath my front door & a sign posted inside that says ‘No Exit!!’  The neighborhood cats were fascinated by this portal to a whole new dimension of space to hang out in under the house, which was now completely open & ventilated.  Soon, I will be cocooned inside 4 walls of insulated HardiePlank... can’t wait to see the lower CPS bill! 

The point here is to pose the question ‘why does a renter help with all this?’  I have no vested interest in this place, other than spending my days in and around it.  There are days when I believe my modest surroundings are some form of punishment for a series of very bad decisions made years ago.  Going from owning a large house on large land with a large pool to renting a bungalow is a huge ego blow to absorb. 

I find that putting my time & sweat into my friend’s place helps me enjoy it more.  I guess I’m also a believer in treating a place as if I did own it, and leaving a place better than I found it... the curse of a quality upbringing. 

There’s a line from ‘American Beauty’ that I will probably carry with me for the rest of my life; “I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world.”  I have friends that preach the power of ‘positive thinking’, and truly believe that one can dictate one’s reality with one’s thoughts and nothing more.  I think that’s total BS.  But the philosophy is rooted in a physical truth; if you spend time focusing on negative events, you’re probably going to come up with an excuse to not facilitate or participate in positive events, and that’s a recipe for psychological disaster.  Maybe it’s all just an origin of the saying ‘Idle hands are the devil’s playthings’, and somebody had to apply religious imagery to make their point many years ago. 

Working is therapy, and I will continue to put my sweat equity into another person’s investment, selfishly knowing that I will benefit in the short term, and hoping to earn a few karma points down the road.  Either way I know... if I just sat on my butt watching and listening to my friends busting their backs on the place where I live, I wouldn’t enjoy life nearly as much as I do when I’m helping out. 

Now... where’s that ibuprofen?