our nichiha has been up for a while now and we still have people knock at the door to ask what color we painted our siding. they seem shocked when i tell them it's cement. we're six miles inland in central new jersey and have just come through hurricane sandy with absolutely no damage to the siding. it's unfortunate most of the trees and telephone poles didn't hold up as well. in the meantime, as i drive down our street not everyone was as fortunate. i noticed a newly sided house had to have some repair work done on their hardiboard. ;-) without question, nichiha is superior to hardi. we have a factory finish in weathered gray. love it.

Lowes used to have a free service called "the Color Doctor", a gentleman who specialized in exterior color schemes. They don't have it anymore, but when I googled the phrase I found he is affiliated with a site called "Old House Authority". I contacted him when I painted my house, & although I didn't exactly use his suggested palette, it got me started toward where I ended up. I really enjoyed the process of picking colors, but I did take a while! I ended up with a sage green (Glidden "high tea") with very dark green shutters and cream-yellow (Laura Ashley "bleached wheat") porch and trim. My roof at the time was the lightest grey, now it is a medium-dark gray-brown mix, and the colors still work. On your house (a style that I love)I like the pale yellow, but the blue really threw me off. And so did the white on the 2nd story bump-out. I would like to stay with yellow myself; if the current color is truly too bright, in a more muted shade then, and see if I could use a darker trim that ties in with the dark roof better. A sort of butterscotch shade might work. If I couldn't come up with a good trim solution to tie in the roof, then I would be more inclined to go with a green or even a warm grey with color in the trim. There was a house in my neighborhood that was a sort of dusty lilac with dusty rose trim (I've forgotten the third accent color) and it was absolutely delicious. The owners said it was a combination they found on a card at the paint store. I could see it on this house, but don't know if that would be authentic.

Judy, You are obviously doing a good deal of research about your house before making plans, which is a very good idea. I am attaching a link to the entire Preservation Brief series, where you will find a wide range of topics covered, including the most up-to-date editions (available, now, for free on the net). I have a couple of comments about your proposed plans. For your attic I would suggest adding additonal layers of fiberglass on the outside thirds of the attic floor. You can just lay it right over what you have there. (You may need to poke around a bit to discover where you can safely walk on the joists to get the material all the way out to the edge.) For the middle third, I would pull the floor, and insulate that cavity. It's OK to use a combination of materials. In my plastered house I have a thin layer of fiberglass, followed by as much high R-value foam sheets as will fit in order to get the highest R-value in the space available, without putting undue pressure on the plaster or squashing material under the flooring. In your 75- year old house you probably have balloon framing which is easier to blow in insulation than some other type of framing. But blown in material may present problems due to lack of a vapor barier, and if you follow through on your plan to add vinyl siding, that may exacerbate the problem. If your wood siding is still sound, you could have it scraped and sanded and repainted. Vinyl siding inevitably results in a change (and not for the better in most cases) of the details of your houses' exterior appearance. You could also have the siding removed, along with underlayers of sheathing, etc. and insulate (and add air and moisture barriers) before reinstalling the cleaned-up siding, though this is big job. I would opt for just scraping and repainting. As for your proposed new windows, well, I wouldn't do that either, if your existing windows aren't completely rotten. In most instances wooden windows can be vastly improved energy-wise by rehabilitation, instead of simply replacing them. Unless you are extremely lucky or prepared to devote enormous sums to having exact replicas made, the new windows will be, at best, a compromise stylistically. The loss of both the siding, trim and window details will change your houses' appearance significantly. In this year of energy-cost worry, it is hard not to spring for any and all improvements, but you can make a big dent in your energy-use by adding additional insulation to your attic, good weatherstripping around doors, diligent caulking all over the house, perhaps even temporary interior storm windows, etc. These relatively small-scale jobs will give considerable payback in both energy costs saved and increased comfort. And they will buy you time to assess the big picture and find solutions that do not result in so much loss of your house's historic character. With old houses, I find it's really important to go as far as you can in adding energy efficiency, but not worry much if you can't achieve R-49 in your attic. That's the standard for new constructin and in most old buildings not a realistic goal. Good luck with your house! Molly~ Here is a link that might be useful: Home page for Preservation Brief series

kaismom -- Very good list! Thanks. I'd like them to look at ALL the possibilities and ALL the financial ramifications, not merely try to make this work because it is on the table. Their present home is in a 'good' school district. That doesn't change the fact that the kids going into that school are often struggling. DIL's pre-teen niece has just been taken out of that 'good' school and put in parochial school, entirely because of her involvement with questionable friends -- typical classmates from the neighborhood. The prospective property neighborhood has a typical Chicago school -- not good. There is a public 'magnet' school located there that is very good. There is a parochial school option -- for $6K a year, plus, plus, plus. I'm not anti-city. Suburban schools can be lacking too. I just had lunch with an old neighbor. Her DS and DIL live in a far, fast-growing suburb. Her DIL is thrilled that their eldest child will have PE three days a week and *either* art or music once a week. She is a teacher in the same suburb, but in a different district. Her pupils have PE one day a week and art/music now and then. My old neighbor pointed out that the school her DS and mine attended (in another suburb) had, and still has, PE every day and art and music three days a week. I should add that my DIL teaches in the inner city; no 'enrichment' there. I don't really understand why my 'kids' choose to limit themselves to living/teaching in the city now that they have a child who will be entering school. I understood and admired their 'giving back' dedication up to now. (They are both wonderful people, raising a really NICE child -- who has yet to be exposed the children in his neighborhood. He attends a parochial pre-K.) Thank you all for 'listening' and for your ideas. It helps!