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Fancy trim. And siding.

 Saturday


Eliot detailed the front wall to prepare for installing its 2x trim.


We built a 12-1/2"-wide board from tounge-and-groove car decking. This took far longer than we'd hoped. The delivered materials were junk; we had to go back to the store to hand-select some decent boards. Then we doweled the butt joints and glued up to the full width. Then we ripped it down to the final width, cut to length. Sanded, added bondo wood filler, sanded some more. Then we ripped three features into the board to help it shed rain, and primed it.

I'm telling you this to explain how we spent a whole Saturday and didn't actually attach anything to the house.


You know what takes the edge off a long day? Barbecue at Smokey's at sunset.

Sunday


We realized midday that we were short a couple pieces of flashing. Eliot drove into town to buy some, but neither hardware store that's open Sundays stocked it, so he came back with an empty rack ... and a flat tire. Sigh.


Well, we're definitely not getting through the big stack of premium lumber this weekend. Better put it in the house to keep it from warping before we use it.


Here's the one piece of wood we installed on the front of the house, 4pm Sunday. This is the 20-foot long, 1-foot wide piece we built on Saturday At least it looks pretty good!


We rounded out the evening by finishing up the siding and trim on the North side of the house. This is filmed in grainy-o-vision because it's already so dark out that we put the last few nails in by flashlight. Now three walls are completely sided (but still need window trim and battens).

Tuesday

Eliot's last day at the cabin before heading out to college.


We finished preparing the upper horizontal board, another glued-together piece. Note the chamfered corners, ready to line up nicely with the trim on the upper windows.

In it goes! Only two o'clock in the afternoon.
The next pieces are all single pieces of wood; these should go fast, right?


Nope! Every piece needed custom bits of tapered profile, rabbets cut out of the back to set neatly over the nailing flanges, and (above) slots routed where the flashing material on the wall is built up too thick. Cut, test-fit, mark, cut again. Prime, drill...


Finally, putting in the vertical boards. We got three more boards in before 7:30, as the sun began to sink behind the mountains in the west.


We would have loved to get farther, but here is the beginning of the trim on that front wall. Hooray!

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