little bits of vinyl siding saw dust all over me

thursday, i finished installing soffit panels on the north side. i also cut two pieces of window trim.

friday, i cut all of the window trim pieces to length. i then cut all the miters for the windows on the north wall. i found cutting miters for one window (four corners) took about 20 minutes.. much longer than i expected.

the window trim is composed of wide j-channel. they are 12'6" long, just as regular j-channel. however instead of ~1" deep, it's 2.5" deep. here is a shot at the end of thursday with two pieces up:

From vinnie pics by mike

the miter cuts i'm referring to are standard cuts made to form mitered corners with j-channel:


i think i could speed up those cuts a bit with some templates; instead of measuring, marking, tracing, then cutting along a line, i could trace the template, then cut to the line. considering i still have a bunch of window miters to cut, that could save some time.

i also started on the siding panels yesterday:

From vinnie pics by mike

i snapped lines and have been nailing the panels to meet the lines. this keeps the rows consistently straight, as can be evidenced by the picture. when i sided the shed back in.. good lord 2008.. i snapped lines for the starter strip, and then just laid up each course against the previous. however i found the courses tended to get out of parallel slowly, though i suppose not to a terrible degree.

while keeping it to these lines does make it straight, i'm afraid i may be nailing the courses up too tightly to meet these lines. installation procedure calls for not nailing the panels up tightly. i am leaving the nail heads proud of the panels so there is horizontal movement, but they are fairly tight in the vertical direction at many points thus far.

i'll have to just move on and see how it handles seasonal changes in temperature. the rest of the walls will be aligned with this, so it is what it is :P

also one small mistake was the first corner i set, in the right rear, was cut about 1/2" short. this was due to a miscalculation of the length on my part. so this corner may shrink to above the bottom of the panels in cold weather.. and i guess i'll chalk that up to life. it shouldn't be noticable unless you're looking for it. of course, now that i've mentioned it..