Economics
Koontz - I was in the neighborhood of a former client the other day and as I waited for my appointment one of the neighbors and I struck up a conversation. We had been introduced when I was working in the area, and I've become good friends with the former client so this neighbor sees me around alot as I dog-sit and go over to Spa or to have a weekend dinner. The neighbor, Tim, therefore knows what I do for a living and he wanted to ask about a wall treatment he was thinking of for his house.
Tim has a cute California Bungalow with ship-lap siding. Over the years though, the siding has deteriorated in areas and the material cannot be found at the local lumberyards or home repair stores. Though I haven't scoped out Tim's house specifically, usually this type of siding is Redwood and because it's a soft wood, it doesn't take well to industrious scraping and sanding. Tim could have the siding replicated at a good lumber yard, but they would have to mill the pieces for him-that means they'd have to take the time to actually make the size and style of his existing siding. That's an expensive proposition. A lumber yard charges for it's "set-up" time-and it's never cheap.
Tim is in a quandry. He wants to improve the look of his place and to his mind and with real world financial considerations, how can he realistically accomplish this?
I'm in a quandry too. The material Tim is thinking of using-a flagstone veneer-is totally inappropriate for his house. He told me that there's a place around the corner that did this and he likes it-Yikes! So wrong, so wrong, so wrong! (And yes, I went around the corner and looked). The people tried...they used the stone on the front of the house and on the pillars to get some cohesiveness-but they still failed, because it's just the wrong stone. I know the owners' thought to themselves, "hey, all the new houses are using it...why not us?" That's exactly what should have stopped them-new housing is using this-it's not appropriate to a 50 year old home.
On a Craftsman styled California bungalow you can get away with river rock, but you can't get away with flagstone...
But going back to real world finances-what can Tim do? It's a tough question when you want to respect the house and not go broke fixing it up. For Tim's place specifically, I'm going to go back and walk around to see just how much siding he needs to replace. I am hopeful that there's another solution for him because on a cursory look, there wasn't much that wasn't repairable with a bit of advanced knowledge (meaning some hell of good epoxy's), that I'll clue him in on.
Or it might be that he really likes the stone facade and I'll suggest he look at river rock. For homeowners' who have greater quantity needs than Tim, I really am flummoxed as to a solution, I just know the one the neighbor around the corner chose was wrong, and it did indeed devalue his home because he's in a neighborhood where people buy to have the authentic architecture. It was poor research and poor application and it broke my heart.
Tim has a cute California Bungalow with ship-lap siding. Over the years though, the siding has deteriorated in areas and the material cannot be found at the local lumberyards or home repair stores. Though I haven't scoped out Tim's house specifically, usually this type of siding is Redwood and because it's a soft wood, it doesn't take well to industrious scraping and sanding. Tim could have the siding replicated at a good lumber yard, but they would have to mill the pieces for him-that means they'd have to take the time to actually make the size and style of his existing siding. That's an expensive proposition. A lumber yard charges for it's "set-up" time-and it's never cheap.
Tim is in a quandry. He wants to improve the look of his place and to his mind and with real world financial considerations, how can he realistically accomplish this?
I'm in a quandry too. The material Tim is thinking of using-a flagstone veneer-is totally inappropriate for his house. He told me that there's a place around the corner that did this and he likes it-Yikes! So wrong, so wrong, so wrong! (And yes, I went around the corner and looked). The people tried...they used the stone on the front of the house and on the pillars to get some cohesiveness-but they still failed, because it's just the wrong stone. I know the owners' thought to themselves, "hey, all the new houses are using it...why not us?" That's exactly what should have stopped them-new housing is using this-it's not appropriate to a 50 year old home.
On a Craftsman styled California bungalow you can get away with river rock, but you can't get away with flagstone...
But going back to real world finances-what can Tim do? It's a tough question when you want to respect the house and not go broke fixing it up. For Tim's place specifically, I'm going to go back and walk around to see just how much siding he needs to replace. I am hopeful that there's another solution for him because on a cursory look, there wasn't much that wasn't repairable with a bit of advanced knowledge (meaning some hell of good epoxy's), that I'll clue him in on.
Or it might be that he really likes the stone facade and I'll suggest he look at river rock. For homeowners' who have greater quantity needs than Tim, I really am flummoxed as to a solution, I just know the one the neighbor around the corner chose was wrong, and it did indeed devalue his home because he's in a neighborhood where people buy to have the authentic architecture. It was poor research and poor application and it broke my heart.
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