WorkerBee

Those old growth 2x4s are a lot stronger than the new stuff. They should be able to handle the load of the Hardi-plank. It is the sills that can sag after a few years and may need extra piers. Regardless I'd stay away from the stuff. It looks cheap and it is not that impervious to the elements. Also, old houses move and flex (specially around here with the expansive clays). The heavy duty fasteners used to hold the Hardy up can cause all sorts of problems when old pier and beam houses do their seasonal dance. Dan is probably right. The asbestos (take precautions taking this stuff down) is probably over the old wood siding, which could be in pretty good shape. If you need replacement boards the Historic Houston salvage warehouse is worth a visit. Good luck.

This is what's troubling us the most. We want to do everything by the book. In Austin we pulled all the permits, studied the code books, and made sure we did everything to code. In the end we saved tons of money and were happy with the results. We would like to do this here, but the city is more interested in encouraging house flippers and townhouse development than potential longterm owners. It makes sense from a tax perspective. We've been at our current place since 2002 and most of the surrounding bungalows have either flipped multiple times at ever-increasing prices or been torn down and replaced with three-to-a-lot townhouses. Currently we are leaning towards pulling all the permits. We may change our mind when the rewire estimates start coming in.

We've owned our 1920 bungalow for almost seven years and haven't had time or money to do a much needed restoration. We now have some time and a little bit of cash to make some improvements. My wife and I are DIY types and did two successful, to-the-studs bungalow restorations in Austin. When we bought ours in Houston we knew was going to need a lot of work but were pretty sure that we were up to the challenge. The problem is that we waited a little bit too long and prices in our area have gone up significantly. Now we are afraid that doing any major work will trigger a tax reassessments. From talking to neighbors we've gathered that pulling permits is the main trigger for tax reassessments. We would like to keep everything on level but the potential tax hike is scary. That and the fact that one of the majo expenses is going to be electrical in nature and as we understand it in Houston homeowners cannot do their own electrical work. What should we do? Most of the work is going to be inside and in the crawlspace, away from prying eyes. Should we go for it?