"Vinyl is Final," Part 2

And another thing . . .

It's bad enough to put vinyl siding on a new house, in my humble opinion, but downright dastardly to deface an older home with it, especially one with a lot of interesting detailing.

There is a beautiful old "Stick Style" Victorian house in my village, just a few blocks away from me even as I write this. I admire it every time I drive or walk past.

The house's exterior walls are sided sided with wood lap siding that is divided and subdivided with slim boards in the geometric patterns that characterize this style. It is quite lovely, especially since you won't see anything whatsoever like this built today--it would take too much time to build, too much fussy work for carpenters who need to get on quickly to the next porject, probably too much thought to design, too much money, etc. etc.

Now what would this charming old house look like covered over with vinyl siding, all that detail of pattern and other wood casing and molding details gone, gone, gone? I don't need to tell you, because chances are all you have to do is go out your door and drive a litle ways to see an example very much like this one.

Its just as bad with Italianate houses, maybe worse. Usually you see those big brackets under the wide eaves, so characteristic of the style, completely gone, consigned to the dumpster because they were too difficult to get the vinyl siding around, and why would you want to keep them anyway because the whole point of the vinyl is not to have to paint anything anymore?

I'll be back to this again with some links to historic preservation sites and links about vinyl alternatives.