Journal: July 26th. Siding thoughts

original cedar shingles

current white vinyl siding

candidate for future siding

more gray siding--not too bad

From the moment I saw the dreadful white vinyl siding covering the original wooden shingles, I'd assumed the first thing I'd do, if I ever got the house, was restore it to its original (or relatively original) shingled self. But...George Roof, who as he says, "loves wood as much as the next guy," has convinced me that given the cost, given the maintenance, given the advantages of foam insulation (which you put on between the old siding and the new), vinyl siding is the way to go. Which means I will have a plastic covered house. So be it.

In meandering drives through the neighborhood, I have discovered that most houses are covered in vinyl. With my aging eyes, it was initially difficult for me to discern the difference between wood and properly installed vinyl siding. Now, after weeks of practice, I can usually distinguish wood from vinyl away--but that is perhaps irrelevant.

George counsels against white vinyl--it blemishes too easily. We find ourselves leaning towards shades of gray--the question is how dark should we go? Sam, Carrie and I spent hours driving around today looking at various shades of gray (George gave us a list of addresses he'd gotten from the siding store of newly installed gray vinyl). I took a slew of pictures of what I thought were different colors--but due either to tricks of light, or my photographic failings, they all look almost the same.
George later told me that there are other kinds of vinyl siding which are shaded in ways to look even more like wood--so perhaps the investigations aren't over--though I doubt I'll be able to get Sam and Carrie to head out on another siding outing.

Sam received the leather bound copies of his Chekhov book, delivered to my Augusta Post Office and spent the rest of the afternoon buying packing materials and getting ready to send them out. To follow his book efforts: http://www.shackmanpress.com/

Another dinner on the grill--marinated chicken thighs, eggplant, onions, zucchini and tomato, cucumber and onion salad--followed by a splendid walk through hyper humus (it was late by the time we finished eating--so in a break with all precedent and taking advantage of the new paulinskill-hyper humus wildlife management area which our acreage has now been added to, we drove to the little parking lot at hyper humus and walked until a swelling orange full moon was visible in the eastern sky. If we'd had money with us, we would have dashed to Dairy Queen, but instead drove home and made ourselves root beer floats for night caps.