Another piece of the puzzle

Our house has been extensively "simplified" or as my husband likes to call it, "dumbed down." We have no pictures of what the outside looked like when it was built. Apparently, according to the lady at the historical society, this was the "wrong side" of Main Street for there to be any interest in the house when it was built. There are pictures of all the houses on the other side of Main Street but nothing on this side. We have been trying to find out what kind of outside decorations there might have been since it is now all clad in aluminum and vinyl.

In the past week we have gotten a couple of clues about the soffits. We had a hole in the siding in one soffit.

You can see it up there in the corner. It let lots of birds into our attic which our cat promptly disposed of. (It was really gross.) Doug and one of our friends closed this up with some leftover siding a couple of days ago. Doug said that it was obvious that all the soffits were originally covered with beadboard. Very interesting! Is this common practice on a Victorian? Anyway, we know that when we start taking off the aluminum, we will restore that feature.

Then yesterday, we heard something metallic fall on the roof when were watching "This Old House." Some more of the aluminum soffit had fallen off in the wind. (We do live in Kansas!) When Doug went up to put it back on, this is what he found.


It would seem that this is the original soffit and it had some time of a decorative bracket on it! This is the kind of discovery that only excites renovaters but it's a thrilling discovery for us. We have no idea how ornate or plain this house was originally and now we will feel that we can eventually add some decorative brackets and they will be in keeping historically with the house! Hallelujah!