Garage

We beat the cold November weather!  I finished  painting the siding and shakes and Steven installed the shakes on the north side above the garage door.  The shakes are painted for the back south side but they will wait until spring.

Today we finished installing the horizontal lapped siding!  Tomorrow is rain and colder.  Three days of cooler weather.  Sunday will be a warm up again and we’ll have 3 more days to install the shakes in the two gables.  Yesterday I was able to paint the siding on one side of the garage door and most of the siding on the back side.

After ripping more boards we stacked them and then I primed the cut edges.  This was a great improvement over priming each edge after we installed it.

Steven (who is never too warm) found it too warm today.  Shocking November weather in Minnesota.

We’ve finished the trim.  We didn’t agree on how to do the windows so we compromised.  5 1/2″ on top, 4 1/2″ on sides and 2 1/2″ on the bottom.  The house will be better to have 5 1/2″ on top, 4″ on sides and 2″ on the bottom to keep in with a Folk Victorian.

We needed to match the siding on the house which is narrow lapped wood.  We chose an 8″ manufactured siding that we ripped in half.  The planks were 16′ long so a special set up was devised.  We discovered that we could safely rip two planks at a time.  We ripped several at a time.

The siding was primed but each cut needed to be primed to protect it.  Before installing I primed the ends and primed the top edge of the cut piece after installation.  I caulked the joints after installing each row.

We started with the west (street) side to have the most impact for the community.  The north (garage door) side would have been fun to start with but it used small pieces for each side and was best to wait and use smaller pieces left over from other cuts and make more efficient use of our siding.

We overlapped the siding onto our cement starter board 1″ and that gave us a wider board at the bottom to more closely match the house.

We got to the windows and a row of siding just fit under them perfectly.  We will need to go back and install a narrow piece of siding under each.

We finished most of the west side before it got too dark to work.

Rain and cold are forecast for the next two days with a warming on Saturday.  Amazing weather for this time of year in Minnesota (end of October).  Halloween is Saturday and we’ve had blizzards in the past.

We had a quick bon fire to begin a long 3 day weekend of rest and renewal.  Steven is going to a men’s retreat and I am relaxing at home after catching up on house cleaning Friday morning.

We finished the trim board under the eaves today.  The garage is now not only weather tight but also critter safe.

We also installed one corner trim board and one cement board for starting the siding.  I painted all the cement boards for the starter boards today.

This past week we have had two people stop (on different occasions) and tell us they had been watching us all summer work on the garage.  They both complemented us on our work, said we were doing a good job and then saying they admired us for doing it!  One man asked if we hired out – he wants a steel roof.

Wow.  So here is the finished roof.

We have discovered that we can install one panel every 20 minutes.  There are a total of 42 panels plus two edge panels on each gable and 3 ridge vents.  We have 6 panels left, two edge panels and 2 ridge vents.  We’ll finish tomorrow!  We’ll have the blessing of an unusually warm October day in Minnesota.