Ooh la la! Great shingle example, macv. Pamela, how are your boards deteriorated? It may be that there are too many thick layers of paint, and painters are worried about getting one more coat to adhere well? There is a house in my neighborhood owned by a pro painter. It's over 100 years old. The last time he painted it, he had his crew scraping and sanding like crazy, often to bare wood. Some boards were replaced. I have never seen such a thorough prep-job, but, then again, the owner was a pro, and probably keeping his crew busy between other jobs. I'm not sure anyone else would have been willing to pay going rates for that much prep work. It was probably triple the cost of a standard paint job when all was said and done. I wonder if painters are turning down your job because it would similarly require intensive prep to be done right. Maybe they just want to spray and go to the next job. But if you could get someone to bid on it, sanding, scraping, board replacement, the whole nine yards, it might be cheaper than new siding, and future repainting would not be so expensive, unless you let it go too long between paint jobs. I'm not saying this is what you should do, but you might want to consider it. Also I don't see how keeping existing siding precludes insulation. My house had insulation blown in from the inside when we were repainting rooms anyway. From the outside, they only have to remove two clapboards; one high, and one low, to blow in. You have solar panels to save energy. There is an energy cost to produce new siding, and to dispose of your existing. Considering this might be one more piece of your analysis. I think you have a beautiful house and great taste. It's nice to see another old house owner who takes the time to research before starting a major project. I'm sure the results will be beautiful no matter what you decide.

It's a PBS station, Dibby. If you go to CreateTV.com and put in your ZIP code, it can tell you which stations carry it. Here, for instance, although it has its own channel, it's offered by WVIA-TV. WVIA is on Channel 44, and Create is on Channel 44-3. It's different in different areas. The CreateTV website also lists daily schedules and has links to all the programs. It's great!

Yes, it is mostly handquilted. It's difficult to see from the photos, but each of the blue squares has a large drop of water hand quilted in it and each of the green squares has a starfish hand quilted in it. And of course, the picture has been echo quilted (also by hand). I did use my machine to do the straight quilting lines in the yellow rectangle between the two blue and green rectangles. Since I'm a first-timer, I guess I broke the rules a little bit. Rather than do a binding and hand stitching it on the right side, I just made the backing large enough to fold over (and meter) and machine stitch on the front.

A lot of us have friends that live elsewhere ... but a lot of jasdip's fiends ("friends", that was supposed to be: honest!)... are worms ... that make themselves at home in her apt. She does get some useful work out of them. ole joyful