Separated by 70 miles and a complete lack of communication, my twin daughters had a “twin moment” two weeks ago.

Cue the "Twilight Zone" theme music.

This is not the first time our 32-year-old twins have had the same experience at nearly the same time without any communication or coordination.

Typically, it has been something benign, like wearing the same outfit on the same day, or feeling the same pain in the same knee on the same day.

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This time, it was an old-house owner’s twin moment.

They both decided to rip the modern siding off the fronts of their houses — from the porch floor to the porch ceiling.

Each twin. Both houses. Same swath of siding.

Increase volume on "Twilight Zone" theme music.

It’s worth noting that we didn’t know our twins were identical until they were 19 years old. To us, their parents, and to their older sister, they didn’t look enough alike — and they certainly didn’t act enough alike — to be identical.

They were born three minutes apart, and they look a lot alike, but not enough that we had trouble telling them apart. That’s mostly because they are as different as night and day. (Thus, my wife, who made Halloween costumes for them for years, once made costumes for them that depicted one as the moon and the other as the sun.)

Daughter No. 2 fussed over her hair and wore everything “pretty.” That sometimes meant that she wore polka dots with stripes and paisley. She entertained all of the neighbors with her amazing technicolor wardrobe. Her twin, Daughter No. 3, wore her hair short for years, wouldn’t put on a dress if you held a gun to her head, and for years, was most comfortable when she was wearing cleats and diving to save a soccer ball.

As the years have gone by, Daughter No. 2 has become more comfortable in a paint-spattered shirt, and No. 3 wore a dress once — to her older sister’s wedding. But both of them speak the same language and share the same love of old houses.

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Truth be told, they are overtaking me in knowledge about how to renovate these old houses we all call home. That’s because they do exhaustive research on how to tackle the projects they want to pursue. And they have access at their fingertips to more resources than I ever could have imagined finding in my extensive library of how-to books.

The internet has transformed the process of learning how to do everything from installing old-fashioned TV antennas to fixing rain gutters, or removing vinyl and aluminum siding.

But they also are fearless about tackling such projects because they grew up seeing their mother and me doing the same types of projects. In fact, they saw me remove siding from the front of our house to reveal the original clapboards. It totally changed the street view of the house — from remuddled to the original 1870’s look.

Daughter No. 2 removed tan vinyl siding from the front wall of the front porch of her new old house to reveal perfectly preserved clapboards painted dark red. She and virtually all of her neighbors liked the two-tone color scheme so much that she is going to keep the dark red porch wall and evaluate whether the rest of the siding will come off.

Daughter No. 3, meanwhile, had removed the 8-inch-wide aluminum siding my grandpa installed on her house at least 50 years ago. My dad, who lives next door, hadn’t noticed that she had pulled down the siding. When she told him what she had done, his first reaction was, “What’s underneath? It’s been so long that I don’t remember.”

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Same as her sister’s house: Perfectly preserved clapboard siding.

We old souls get it. Many people don’t like the idea of painting a house. But the look and feel of original wood siding on very old houses can’t be duplicated.

And we’re willing to take on the painting responsibilities that come with removing modern siding to reveal the original look.

For my daughters, it came during a twin moment.

Cue the "Twilight Zone" music again.

Alan D. Miller is a former Dispatch editor who teaches journalism at Denison University and writes about old house repair and historic preservation based on personal experiences and questions from readers.