My wife and I are really enjoying the new look at 8 Simsbury Road. The new siding and windows project is complete. The new windows open so easily to catch a breeze or be cleaned, and they look great. Our bright white house looks renewed as we drive up. We are feeling very blessed to be here and benefit from this renovation.
Here is comparison picture of the house before the project began. Of course, the first thing one notices is that the hedge is now gone. It was so big and had grown so close to the house that it would have been impossible to side the house without doing major damage to it anyway. Rod Clark, the overseeing trustee from West Granby UM Church, and I decided that its time had come.
The old aluminum siding was starting to lose corner pieces and was very dirty in the front. On the East side the paint had thinned in places and been scraped off by shubbery in others. But it was the May 2018 hailstorm that brought about the residing project. We were not home, but our neighbor across the street arrived just after it passed through to find golf-ball sized hail on her lawn. Three of the old triple-track windows had been broken in our house and the Northwest side of the house was a sight. It looked like someone had taken a paintball gun loaded with gray paintballs to it. Everywhere one of those large hailstones had hit, the hail had scraped the paint off the siding and dented it. This ultimately resulted in the insurance company approving new siding for the house.
The project came to fruition this fall-- perfect timing for a daylily gardener. You can't hurt daylilies at this time of year. So, our house has been a construction site for the last couple weeks as workers replaced the old aluminium siding with new white vinyl siding. Michael G. and crew have done an excellent job. They considered the fact that this parsonage is located in the historical section of West Granby and so they gave the window trim the wider colonial look to fit the area.
In the process, the West Granby UMC trustees also invested in some new windows, replacing all the old triple-track windows. They felt that when a house is being resided was the time to do that. The old windows were drafty. The new windows were inserted in the existing frames. While they are supposed to be slightly smaller in glass area, they appear bigger because the old triple track storm window is no longer on the outside partially obscuring the view. Good insulation board was added underneath the siding too. Overall, the house should be warmer in winter and cooler in summer because of these improvements.