gimme a break

i rented a 10' brake from home depot over race weekend. friday, i took measurements of all the important fascia dimensions. i bent and cut all the pieces saturday afternoon into sunday morning. everything was nailed up sunday afternoon.

the top edge of the fascia was hemmed, and this allowed me to wedge the fascia under the drip edge and it held itself in place. a few pieces needed extra help, in which i used a clamp to help out. i found it best to nail the ends of a piece in place first, then any nails between without moving the piece.

all the exposed nails were predrilled, and the nail head was left just proud in an attempt to prevent bending the face of the metal. in a few areas, the subfascia wasn't straight enough to prevent this happening.

also the bottom bend of the fascia should be only ever slightly overbent, as too much causes it to look messy once it's up. unfortunately most of the eaves were overbent and nailed from the center out, so they don't look very good up close. but, the gutters once eventually installed should disguise most of that.

siding finished

the siding was completed on monday. alas, i've yet to bring the camera for pics.

tuesday, i started on a small deck addition for my pops in smyrna. should be done soon, then it's back to vinnie!

siding an inch from completion

friday, i put up the vertical siding on the front gables.

saturday, i put up the rest of the siding except one piece on the left gable. i am short a piece, so will need to wait until monday to finish.

preparing for plumbing..

almost sided

returned from vacation yesterday - camping rocks! today i'm going to buy the last few siding materials i need and we'll see how much i can get done!

west wall begins

monday, i finished siding at the peak of the rear wall. moving to the west wall, i put up felt on the middle corner.it was a hot one, and not much else happened.

tuesday, i measured, cut, and stapled up felt. i put up the corners in the middle of the wall.

From vinnie pics by mike

wednesday, i cut miters in the window trim and nailed those pieces up. i also measured/cut/nailed j-channel around the mailbox and street number. i measured & cut j-channel for around the porch & door. katie & i made a last minute decision on the gable siding, and we picked that up as well as some more j-channel.

thursday, i installed the horizontal band on the left gable. this is composed of a wide j-channel open downward, in-line with the wide j-channel on the north & south walls which acts as a frieze board. this piece is topped with a z-flashing, which i bent out of vinyl flashing. in retrospect, i probably should have looked for an aluminum flashing in this profile, or bent it on a brake from aluminum. the vinyl is a little wavy and i suspect it will move some. the z-flashing is then topped with a piece of regular j-channel open to above, to receive the gable siding.

next i started on the j-channel lining the gable, which goes up simultaneously with soffit. i then had to modify the ridge board, just as i did on the rear gable. the bit on the rotozip broke, so i had to finish that work with a chisel (which worked better than i expected.) then i finished the soffit and laid up most of the siding, to just below the horizontal band. this is all on the left gable wall.

hurricane earl is nearby, so i'm hoping to get more of the wall covered this morning before any severe winds show up to tear off the felt.

tis the east

sunday i continued siding the east wall. it was a hot one, and the house became a giant oven. the heat slowed my pace considerably, but i managed to side most of the wall, up the rake, except for perhaps two pieces at the very peak.

my pace is also slowed significantly by my decision to not purchase/rent scaffolding. it's a lot of up & down on the ladder, but i think one less thing to deal with makes me happy for now. the scaffolding may have saved a day & a half per wall, but minus a half day setting up & taking down, so four days in all.. just a guess.

an efficient scaffolding setup might be a platform supported by pump jacks, with a cutting station and siding panel stock all attached to the platform. then everything could be done from the platform.. in the baking sun.. food for thought.

east wall siding..

friday i climbed up to the rear gable peak to do a little hacking on the ridge board. you see, when roof framing i didn't take the time to cut the ends of the ridge boards to coincide with the profile of the rake soffits. so now i have to try and make these cuts with the boards and roof in place, atop a shaky ladder.

that was fun. i ran a wratcheting strap through my belt loop and secured myself to the ladder, then attacked the ridge with a sawzall. due to the tightness of the position, i could only make some cuts, the rest i tried with a small hacksaw and then i got the idea to use my rotozip. the bit burned the wood, but it worked well enough to let me make the necessary cuts.

then i installed the soffit and j-channel along the rake. while installing the soffit i ran out of j-channel, so i returned to smyrna for lunch & got the truck so i could pick up the accessories i needed (j-channel & utility trim.) most of the soffit went up except the very peak, as i wasn't sure how to cover it. i installed soffit bottom up from both ends, and each side ended about 2" short of the ridge. i decided to think it over before making a decision.

saturday i ripped & installed the top course on the south wall. i also added a piece to the peak of the rear soffit. ..and i started siding the rear, east wall. i took pics but for some reason i can't transfer them to this computer. i'm too tired to diagnose the problem..

*ah here we go:

From vinnie pics by mike

onto the east wall..

wednesday i added another course to the south wall. one final course is due, which needs to be ripped as it's shorter than a full panel. the ripped panels clip into utility trim, but i need to pick up some more of those, which requires the truck to transport those long suckers.

since no rain will find its way up in there, i decided to just move on to the east wall and get to that last course later. i taped up the joints on the east wall wednesday, while katie mowed the backyard with a weed whacker ;)

thursday, i covered the east wall with felt, cut & attached window trim, and trim around the rear sillcock. upper courses of felt went up in 70inch widths from a ladder. i still need j-channel around the rake, and before that i need to trim up the ridge board with a sawzall, since i ran it a little long during framing.

maybe i'll remember the camera tomorrow..

siding the south wall

sunday i finished adding j-channel around the side door and small penetrations, and began laying up siding. at the end of the day i realized a small mistake, made here:

From vinnie pics by mike

i wanted the panel to go underneath, too. falling asleep with a hammer in hand!

monday i fixed that error and then continued laying up siding. finished here:

From vinnie pics by mike

soffits

on thursday, i spent the day changing wiring for the soffit lights. the lights will be controlled by a motion sensor, or can be forced on with a switch by the side door. the sensor and switch are located at opposite ends, with three soffit lights between them.

i ran two 12-2 cables, both starting at the switch. one hops between the soffit lights and lands at the motion sensor. between lights, hot and neutral are distributed on black & white wires. at the last light, only neutral is carried to the sensor. the other cable runs from the switch straight to the sensor. this carries hot on black, and carries switched hot on white (connected to the sensor's red wire.)

the wall switch will either connect the black wire of the lights directly to hot when switched on, or it will connect black to the red wire of the sensor. this way i can keep hot & neutral fed to the sensor at all times, and only switch the red line to the lights. the sensor automatically starts in a test mode when power is restored to its hot & neutral.



anyhow..

friday, katie & i visited ed. at the end of the day, i stopped at the lot and put up some soffit panels.

on saturday, i installed the rest of the soffit panels and window trim for the south wall. the recessed lights i used are of the type with two mounting bars and a housing that slides along the bars. i mounted them such that they can be slid along the direction of the wall. as the soffit panels went up, i moved the light so that its corresponding hole would only be within one panel. i nailed up the piece, then used a roto-zip type tool to cut out the hole. this produced tons of tiny shards of pvc showering over me and covering every inch of me. definitely requires goggles.

i stuck around until dusk and powered the lights to see how bright they are. they did a good job of illuminating the entry and walkway, however the yellow bug lights i installed have a strange, neon-ish color to them. maybe it will grow on me..

slowing down..

on tuesday, i finished laying up felt. started on the soffit, but then i realized i should wire up the soffit lights before enclosing the soffits. i determined what wire was going where, nailed up a few pieces of 2x6 along the attic joists at the eaves, and ran & stapled wire along it between the lights. i also purchased a motion sensor to be used with the soffit lights.

on wednesday, it was raining all day. i cut the window trim miters, and i cut the soffit panels.

vinyl progress

on saturday & sunday, i continued laying up siding panels, nearly completing the north wall. i think the constant back & forth is what's taking most time here. i mostly measured one piece at a time, then went inside to cut it, brought it outside and nailed. repeat. it would probably be much faster if i record multiple measurements and trust my readings, cut a bunch at once, and nail a bunch at once.

on monday, i put up one last piece of siding to finish the north wall. i decided to start on the south wall, since it has the same eaves profile rather than a gable profile. i taped all the joints with butyl tape and started laying up felt. it was hot and slightly windy, so i was cooking and dealing with wind blowing the felt around. got about halfway up the wall with felt.

i haven't remembered to bring the camera again, i'll try to today. the north wall looks fab, gotta say. the window trim worked out looking nice, and the frieze board detail looks good too.

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..

sidin'

i havent logged my progress in quite some time.. kind of difficult to go over what's been done now. currently, i'm starting on the siding. the past few days went like so:

thursday i ordered the vinyl siding materials
friday the siding arrived. i asked the supplier to call ahead of time, he said he would. never called. i arrived around noon to find a pile of boxes sitting on the lawn. i brought them inside, then i ensured all the staples on the north wall were set flush with a hammer. i sealed all north wall sheathing joints with butyl tape.
saturday i covered almost the entire north wall with felt, except a thin strip at the top.
sunday katie and i went to the beach.
monday i finished off the felt and started on the soffit. i realized i needed to install the floodlight first. that was about all, it wasn't a good day.
tuesday i celebrated the 39th month anniversary of katie & i by sitting home all day.. uh yeah.
wednesday, today, i did most of the north wall soffit and installed the floodlight. i mounted a round box then nailed the soffit piece over it, then used a rotozip-type tool to cut out a hole, then mounted the light. worked good.

i had a "oh duh" moment today, about halfway through the soffit installation when i realized i could cut more than one soffit panel on the saw at a time lol. that sped things up. tomorrow i'll finish the soffit and start siding on the north.

i'm doing one side of the house at a time, because i know the felt wont hold up to much wind and by doing a wall at a time it reduces the time its exposed. i'll have to get some pics of the progress..

soffit looks nice though. :)