Siding on My Mind

As the last couple of blogs have expressed, progress on the siding has been on many people's minds this week. The site crew was blessed with beautiful weather after Monday's torrential rains, and the excitement pushed the progress. Some of the group that usually stays on campus even postponed their tasks to help us out. Matt Childress and I were scheduled to tile the bathroom walls and ceiling after an extremely informative lesson from tile master Mr. Bob Brown last Saturday. But we decided to take advantage of the good weather to try to finish the siding on the east and west facades.

There was some work on the blocking that needed to be done around the door on the east side of the house before strong progress could be made. Once that was completed, the siding progressed from north to south past the canopy and front door. Also, the place for the vent for the stove range hood needs to be blocked out as well for the siding to be completely finished on the east side.

On Thursday and Friday I helped with the siding on the west side of the house. The first task was to install the box frame around the two windows looking out of the swing space. This was the first box frame I had installed. It was a tedious task of maintaining a continuous spacing around the window frame and keeping the box frame level. We used wood shims to maintain an even space around the window frames. The shims on the sides lined up with the furring strips on the wall, and we drilled through the box frame, through the shims and into the furring strips. After we finished the sides, we repeated the same process along the top and bottom of the frame. Once we cut back the shims to be flushed with the blocking on the wall, we continued putting up siding.

As we are positioning and nailing the siding, we have to think about how the water is going to run off the walls. Around the windows we have the cut a 10 degree angle that follows the angled slope of the box frame to assist in water proofing. We push the siding right up against the bottom of the box frame. On the top we leave a small gap so that water does not get trapped between the top of the frame and the bottom of the siding.

The most effective way to install siding is to have at least 2 people nailing the siding and at least 1 person cutting the siding to length on the chop saw. This process also includes checking and rechecking the spacing between each piece as well as making sure the pieces remain level. As Aaron wrote in the previous blog, checking the blocking as each piece of siding goes up is essential.

The siding on the south facade is complete and the siding on the east and west facades are expected to be finished on Monday or Tuesday. The completion will hopefully come in time for the hardwood floor to be delivered and begin installing, and as well as the tiling to begin in the bathroom.