Shiplap: (planche à feuillure) a siding or cladding of horizontally laid boards with notched edges that make an overlapping joint, applied to the outside of a wood-framed building, or a stone wall, to make it weatherproof; the face of each board is parallel to the plane of the wall (also called drop siding).

I estimate about 20% of my shiplap/drop exterior siding on the house needs replacement due to dry rot, decay and/or just old age. Since none of the local hardware stores stock this stuff, I had to cut a small sacrificial piece to get an accurate measurement. Its 7/8" x 5 and 5/8", with 45° notched angles on both top and bottom of the front surface. Common stock (so I’m told) about 80 years ago in this part of the world, but only now available by a wood mill.

I brought my sample to Blackstock’s (a local in town mill) who quoted between $3.50 - $5.00 a linear foot! I might be able to find a cheaper mill on Bainbridge or across the boarder, which would be lower, but still over my budget.

Another option would be to use standard blanks of 1” x 6”, which sells for $0.31 a linear foot, and mill it myself. That would require purchasing a planer (maybe with a joiner option), and a router table. It could mill it down to the proper width, and with three different router bits, I could reproduce the butt joints and notches to recreate my 120 year old siding. We’ve all seen Norm on Yankee Work Shop mill his own stock, but I’m not sure how easy it will be for someone who took shop in high school. (A photo of the siding it shown below.)

The Works Progress Administration (later Works Projects Administration, abbreviated WPA), was created on May 6, 1935 with the signing of Executive Order 7034, as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. It was a "make work" program that provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression. One of its many projects included documenting each and every structure on the West coast of the U.S. Workers would would be trained in photography and library research. They would go out, take a picture of the house or structure, document who was currently living there, how much they paid in rent and other information. They would also research who was the original owner, builder/architect, and how much was paid for the land and house. All this information was then placed on a bifold placard, including the photo, to be stored at a regional archive for future use.

And thanks to those WPA workers back in 1937, I now have front profile photo of what my house looked like back then. Only the front porch rails and lower drop siding has changed, from almost 70 years ago. Not bad.

I finally have time to sit down and create a blog, for what I'm calling the Urban Queen Anne. Preliminary pictures can be found here.

We're located in Seattle, a few miles East of downtown in a fairly diverse neighborhood. A link describing the neighborhood can be found on the Seattle P.I.'s website here.

The lot is small, coming in at around 3600 square feet, but is an average size lot, taking into account lots that fall within a few miles radius of downtown Seattle. The lawn is pretty much a war zone; it has been abandond for the last 15 years.

The house itself is an unusual style of Queen Anne Victorian, in which I'm still investigating its exact classification. Its a two story structure, with a logarithmic slopping side roofs to north and south. The south being more pronounced. With dual 'A' frames, 90 degrees on one another. It was once a 4 bedroom, but has been converted to a two bedroom. It contains 1.75 baths, a formal library, a large dining room, a good size living and kitchen and a hall way upstairs that leads to no where (more on that later).

This blog will describe (in detail) my over all experiences, for the last four months as well. From:

• Putting offers on the house that where ignored
• Dealing with the the extremes of a great buying agent (John L. Scott) to crooked selling agents (Windermere)* and manic relocation companies.
• Going though the seven different expections that where preformed on the house
• The negotiations that went on after first acceptance, from what was really fixed versus what was on the contract
• The actual closing
• And the whole lending aspect on this endeavour.

This information should be very valuable to anyone attempting to buy a house and avoiding the pit falls that I happen to stumble into.

And over time, the blog will also document the restoration of house Urban Queen Anne, from its very beginnings, to its completion, while adhearing to specifications on preserving landmarks that are layed out by the Dept of Interior (US). I'll be proceeding through the City Landmark application process in the coming months as well, with hopes of a successful landmark (but nothing is certain).

Welcome.