Siding the house is not all that time consuming... the amount of time that Ive spent actually putting up siding pales in comparison to the amount of time I've spent prepping to put up siding.
The other day Kelby and I replaced the freeze proof water faucet on the south gable end. It should have taken us maybe twenty minutes. It took us about four hours. We needed to extend the faucet about an inch and a half to accommodate the new siding. Freeze proof faucets come in varying lengths... ten inch, twelve inch, fourteen inch, etc. They also are threaded at the connection point and require no soldered joints to replace. In theory, all we had to do was take out the old one, replace it with one that was slightly longer and voila! I've learned over the past few months that theory and reality rarely match...
The faucet in question sits in what Kelby and I have affectionately nicknamed The Coffin Corner. It is the corner furthest from the crawl space entrance. There is barely enough clearance to lay on one's back without hitting the floor joists with ones forehead. There is not enough room to lay on one's side without hitting the floor joists. Fiberglass insulation hangs mere inches from one's face while one lays on one's back. Inches of powder-like dust that hasn't seen water in fifty years coats the ground. It is truly a hellish place.
After crawling into the coffin corner to disconnect the old, too-short, faucet I realized that whoever installed it years ago completely rounded off the corners of the hexagon that the wrench grabs onto. Even with my largest set off channel locks I couldn't break the faucet lose from the death grip that the pipes had on it. Picture several trips back and forth, in the dust, on my belly to retrieve larger and larger tools. Picture hanging on a very large set of channel locks with all my body weight suspended off the ground. Picture much cussing and frustration. Picture me shouting to Kelby to bring the sawsall under the house...
Eventually we cut the pipe off, crawled out from the coffin corner, and headed to the hardware store to purchase a new, longer, freeze proof faucet and all the accouterments to repair the pipe we had cut.
Forty-five minutes later we were back under the house with a propane torch, solder, flux, a copper slip joint, and a new section of copper pipe. Remember, there is about eight inch of clearance in the coffin corner. Of course, the pipe that we cut with the sawsall was too rough to accept a new slip joint without leaking, so I planned to sweat it out at the nearest joint and replace it. There was nowhere close to enough clearance to spin a pipe cutter around it to clean up the end. Picture firing the torch up... picture the torch singeing the floor joist next to the pipe... picture lots of smoke in a confined area... picture a thirty foot belly crawl to get a foil pie plate to act as a heat shield. The heat shield protected the joist and saved me from burning down the house. Even so, it was difficult to hold the heat shield with one hand, heat the pipe with the torch in the other, apply solder with my third hand... oh wait, I don't have three hands. Maybe that is why the process was so difficult... that and the fact that I was trying to contort my body in such a way that I wouldn't have molten solder drip onto me despite the fact that I was working directly overhead in a space in which I couldn't even lay on my side.
An hour or so later I shouted to Kelby, who was right on the other side of the foundation the whole time offering words of encouragement and advice, that he could turn the water back on.
Ten seconds later I shouted to Kelby, who was still right on the other side of the foundation, that he better turn the water off because the new joint was leaking. I kinda figured that it would, given that I needed three hands but only had two.
Fifteen minutes later I shouted to Kelby, still right on the other side of the foundation, to turn the water on again.
Ten seconds later I shouted to Kelby to turn the water off... again.
The third time was the charm. I laid back on the ground, checked my watch and tried not breathe in too much dust or smoke while I waited for ten minutes to confirm that there were no leaks while the system was under pressure.
Then I made the thirty foot belly crawl to daylight... Yes, I still had a few minutes of daylight in which to put up siding now that I'd done the prep work.
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