We rent our house but plan on buying it as soon as we are ready. With that being said, it needs a lot of work. I want to start finding out the different options and prices and whatnot now so we can prepare ourselves when the time comes to purchase.

That being said... It's a late 1880's folk Victorian home, meaning it's a small Victorian. It was in the same family from 1920-2001 and then our landlords who live across the street bought it and rented it out. The lady who owned it renovated it in the 60's with cement/asbestos shingle siding, faux bricks on the front of the house and around the foundation, took all the thick trim off around the windows and insides the house, and replaced most of the old pulley windows with these thin aluminum windows that look like trailer home windows haha. The other windows... She took off the pulleys and had an aluminum track put in instead that doesn't make the window stay up so it comes falling down and I'm afraid I will slice my fingers off haha.

I'm ALL about historic restoration. Most of you know I majored in history, I do genealogy work on the side, I'm obsessed with all things historical lol. I plan to do a full restoration. There are pieces of the cement/asbestos siding missing and you can see that the original clapboard is still on the house. Here's the issue. First, finding out if the siding on the house is in fact asbestos. I hear that people call it asbestos siding but that not all of that style is in fact asbestos. Some are just cement shakes. Most of my neighborhood has it. My one neighbor had hers tested and it wasn't asbestos. My plan is to get ours tested and if it's not asbestos then we can remove it ourselves and see how the clapboard is under. If it is in decent shape we will make a few repairs and paint it. If it's not, then we will have to get new siding. If the top layer of siding IS asbestos then from what I read the best thing to do is leave it and install new siding on top of it because the cost to have it professionally removed is astronomical. If we do that and the clapboard underneath is in bad shape then we will have to pay for the expensive removal AND new siding.


Here are my questions....
If you had asbestos siding did you remove it or do siding over it? If you removed it, what was the cost?

Has anyone ever restored original clapboard or been in this situation? How did it go? What would you suggest?

Talk to me about the different siding options should we have to buy new siding. Vinyl, real cedar shakes, wood clapboard, hardiboard, etc. Pros and cons of each option and price.

Outside window trim... I want to try and replicate the original. Go with wood? A different material? Replace windows first?

Has anyone here ever bought replica historical windows?