cedar. done.

Day two. Time to finish this up so I can stain them and move on. Drug everything back out again from the garage. The ladders. Scaffolding. Chop saw. This time even the table saw -

I made way too many trips back to the garage for the table saw yesterday so I put the kibosh on that today. Bumped the scaffolding up another notch as I started the fifth course. It went pretty quick. I had developed a system like I typically tend to seem to do once I get the hang of something. The courses were not as long. I got to the top beam but no worries it helped a ton having the table saw right there on the porch to cut the shakes that needed to fit around it. It poured for a bit but I was pretty well sheltered under the roof. Still - had to pause for a bit but it cleared up and the sun came out again with blue skies.

Then I got to the historic final piece -

Nailed it into place and by 2:30 or so I was finished -




I stepped back for a second to take a shot -

And even though I'm not yet finished just for fun I dredged up this pic I must have taken right after moving in to compare -

Whoa. Holy cow mother of shrubbery. Then also just for fun and since the scaffolding was right there I headed up again and plopped down on it to install the house numbers -

They actually look really cool (I kerned them optically haha). And I tried the semi-solid stain I had gotten but am worried. Worried that it is too dark (uhh, too solid and doesn't show enough of the cedar through it) so I held off on staining them. Damn. Cos the rest of the afternoon was pretty decent weather-wise and I could have gotten that knocked out but I did not want to put on stain to a bunch of shakes I had just spent two days installing that I wasn't 100% about. So it will be off to Mclendon's to probably get the same shade but in a semi-transparent mix to see if that is any better.

And Julian mowed the lawn for me again -

That kid's an awesome helper. Then he was off biking around flying past on the sidewalk every ten minutes or so. It shouldn't take too long to stain the shakes so if Tuesday evening proves nice weather-wise I'll plan on doing it then.

I have to admit. I remember when I was headed up to my attic a week ago from today to bust out the siding I had the brief thought of 'oh crap I'm gonna knock out a huge hole in my house and I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.' And I've had that thought in the past right before going to tear down ceilings or knock down walls. That thought of "crap I hope this turns out ... '

But I'd have to say for this little siding project I am pretty impressed. Especially for not knowing what I was doing. What I always tell myself is that this sh*t isn't rocket science. Now I just need to finish the painting. And this rain needs to go away but I guess since we never really got summer we will probably never really get fall and just go straight into November-rain-winter ... but I'm hoping not. So much left to do. Paint the porch floor. Finish the stairs. And I'd love to build a little roof over the back door that would match the house roof (i.e. not the crap metal thing I tore off years ago).

Oh, and note to myself is that I only used two bundles of cedar for this entire gable end (uhh, I had bought six but that includes the gable end of the garage too - so I'll probably have about two bundles left - hmm, what to do with extra beautiful cedar siding ... ?).