Initial Thoughts on Siding

Here's what I thought this morning as I walked around my neighborhood. Actually, it's not my neighborhood. My own immediate neighborhood is visually boring, so when I walk--daily--I walk in an adjacent neighborhood, which has an entirely different feel.

First, let me say that I love my walk, and I do not walk for exercise. I walk either to get from point A to point B, or to be nosey and see what people have done with their houses. I consider home improvement, not all home improvement but some of it, folk art, and I just adore what people come up with.

So, I enjoyed this morning's walk except my heart breaks as I view every other house. Our city is one of many abandoned rustbelt cities, which means that there hasn't been any major investment since the auto factories closed in the '50s. Still, the '50s were this city's hey day, and so we have lots of beautiful '50s architecture. However, in the neighborhood where I walk there are more homes from the '20s, '30s, and '40s. We've got some basic bungalows that could rival Bungalow Heaven if only people appreciated them for what they are.

These early to mid-century homes were originally either clapboard, cedar, or asbestos siding. The latter is grained and is sometimes detailed with a wavy edge. I've never really liked this type of siding, but based on my observations, it has held up well. As dangerous as asbestos is, I think that left intact and/or covered with paint, it is not that harmful. Many houses along my path are faced with such siding while many more homes were faced with aluminum siding back in the last century. Week by week, many more, are being covered by vinyl siding.

So that really is what this post is about, why people are investing in vinyl siding and why they seem to prefer it to the natural materials underneath. I want to get to the bottom of people's commitment to plastic, not attractive plastic, but plastic-y plastic. (There are some plastics from the '50s that are attractive. I'm thinking of that used for plates and for costume jewelry, that which almost looks like ceramic.)

Anyway, as I was walking this morning I was trying to make sense of why people choose vinyl, and the thought that kept coming to mind is that people just want to control their time, which is to say control their lives. However much time people may be willing to devote to other household tasks, they are not willing to paint every few years. If this is true, I have to admit that I do not understand the reasoning. It's straightforward enough, but we all know that people spend many many hours on other chores. What makes this one so awful by comparison? I see few people for instance taking up their front lawns and replacing them with, say, recycled tire rubber like we see in playgrounds today. Okay, I've gone a bit far, but people could replace their lawns with vines, ivy or pachysandra and some flowering ground covers. Who does this? Few people in the midwest I assure you. Why so few converts to a grass-free, carefree lifestyle? We all know that lawns are a part of middle-class, home-owning culture. Others have written about this, so I'm not saying anything new. A person's middle class identity is certified by how green and healthy her front lawn is.

By the same token, I think that people feel judged by how neat and clean their home looks, and peeling paint just won't do. The fact is that plastic, on the other hand, has become socially acceptable. And even if you are not financially stable, getting vinyl siding can give you just the psychological boost that you need to work harder at getting and then maintaining a middle-class lifestyle. One cannot help but to feel accepted as neighbors offer nods of approval. Those nods say, well, if it isn't exactly pretty, it's acceptable. You've proven that you belong; we'll abide you. Evidence of this exists in the fact that even new subdivisions with 3,000 square foot homes are often selling 300,000 homes with vinyl siding on them. I think the nation turned a corner with that.

But back to the streets I walk every day. There are many rentals, and I have seen otherwise absentee landlords stick siding up on houses that are practically falling down. I know that he or she must be thinking, I'll have this newly sided house rented in no time. And he or she is right. Yet, few siding companies find work in this neighborhood because brothers and uncles do their own siding. They go from one house to another bringing, or attempting to bring their families' and friends' homes up to the standard. And once they complete yet another house, everyone inside hopes against hope to rest easier for years to come.

What really is my problem, why do I so hate siding? Speaking of my own psyche, I hate anything that covers up something else, especially when that something else is beautiful in its own right. Covering up natural products with fake ones is crazy. Covering up cedar siding is as far as I'm concerned is a sin.

But there's more. I like the feel of things aged. Like wine or cheese, natural materials take on a certain richness, depth with age, and I can relate to that since as I age too I am aware of the depths of my soul. New stuff offends this depth. Covering up my gray hair is a lie. Ah, there's the rub. I don't think we like this kind of richness in America. We are instead perpetual youth; obsessed with renewal.

Yet, I have lived in the South as well, and things are a little different down there. I used to walk through the loveliest of neighborhoods--Historic Oakwood in Raleigh, North Carolina. What a visual, artisic, psychological, and spiritual treat. I took my sister for a walk there once and she became ill, physically, and I think also mentally. My sister is very sensitive and more than a little neurotic. I suspect she's able to sense the presence of spirits or ghosts in old houses and old neighborhoods. My artistic sensitivity I like to think is a little less sensitive, but, then again, maybe not. Anyway, she demanded that I take her home immediately, which of course spoiled my treat that day.

I wonder if Americans are not afraid in this same way, not of ghosts exactly but certainly of the past. I wonder if beneath that worry is the thought that only the time of the present will ensure our success. And yet there are those Southerners who love moss-covered trees, ivy covered houses, lush yards, and who are not afraid of a little peeling paint.

Once, I took my kids walking in a D.C. neighborhood around Union Station. They were very young at the time, under five I think. They described the old brick flats as being "scratched up." They could not understand what beauty I saw in them. But for me scratched up was and remains good. Scratched up houses have character. In fact, when I think of scratched up houses, I think of impressionistic paintings, a wonderful mixture of color, yet distinct, discernable images. I long for those dabs of paint in my walk in the North, but instead there's a blur of white and cream-colored vinyl, one house practically indistinguishable from the next.

Well, that's a little beside the point. Last summer though, on the 4th of July, I began taking the aluminum siding off of my own '50s house. I discovered redwood hiding underneath, thick, sturdy six-inch wide boards in near perfect condition. There was little, if any, crackled paint beneath. Painting didn't even require sanding.

It's appropriate that I should offer this blog one year to the day that I ripped off the first piece of aluminum. Freedom! I'm still not done with that project. I've been savoring my emancipation. Also, I've had to go slowly since, for my husband, ripping off the siding feels like he's having his limbs ripped off one at a time. Before I did the dirty deed, he in fact told me that if I removed the siding, he would--maybe divorce me. I took my chances. He eventually came around to the fact that we would be a post-aluminum family only because he happened to tell someone at work what his peri-menopausal wife had done, and they told him to think about the money that the recycled aluminum would bring. Stacks of metal sat in the garage all fall, winter, and spring. He finally took it to the recycler and cleared just under forty dollars for two hundred pounds. The scrap yard likely cheated us. Doesn't matter. The husband is satisfied, and so am I.