Siding: Almost Done!

From one angle, my exterior almost looks finished! Wow!

I'm still working on two sides of siding and one corner, but this shot of the two complete sides gives you a good idea of how awesome it has turned out. Right?

I just need to finish up the toolshed over the trailer tongue, install and flash the awning over the front door, and put up half a dozen small metal panels over the bathroom window.

More pictures, tips, and techniques after the jump...



Toolshed
I've actually made progress on the toolshed since the above photo was taken; the roof is finished and one side of siding is on. I had plenty of scraps of shou sugi ban tongue and groove, and I patched together the metal roof from leftover pieces of roof/siding panels and flashing--some of which I had to adapt to purpose.

I have basically figured out how to approach the door. I haven't tackled it yet because the piece of CDX plywood I want to use is at the bottom of the stack of plywood that I'll be using to make my ceiling surface, stair stringers, and storage loft floor.

Here's another shot of the tall side of the house.

Front Door
Using short pieces of cedar, the siding around the front door went up pretty quickly and easily. That is, after I'd gotten around the pesky wheel well area! As you can see in the photos to the right and below, I added a 2x4 directly underneath the door. This will eventually be the attachment point for a deck. The 2x4 is flush against the wall, caulked and flashed. Should I have used treated wood? Hmm. Maybe I'll paint or seal it later, when the weather is reliably dry.


The photo above shows the full extent of the front door siding. If you look carefully and/or enlarge the photo, you'll see a notch cut out of the topmost piece of tongue-and-groove. This is where the exterior outlet will go, into which I will plug a light or string of lights for the entryway. Over it will be another 2x4, the attachment point for a folding awning. I think I'll make the awning from wood and clear corrugated polycarbonate. It will extend across the whole width of the cedar section.












Back End
Here's the tongue of cedar that wraps from the cedar side of the house and around the bathroom window.

One stroke of luck was that the distance between the top of the trim above the metal and the bottom of the trim around the window was exactly the width of two pieces of tongue-and-groove cedar. Or maybe I planned it that way, then forgot? Either way, it definitely helped with ease of installation and clean looks.

Another stroke of luck was that I had just enough of the right standing seam metal scraps to snap a discarded top rib over stretches where the bottom rib was exposed--like at the transition between metal and wood, above. Standing seam, or snap-lock, metal roofing works by having each panel with a larger top rib on one side and a smaller bottom rib--with a fastening flange--on the other. As you install the panels side by side, you fasten the first panel down on the bottom-rib side and then the top rib of the next panel snaps over, hiding the fasteners. Yes, yet another name for this system is "concealed fastener." They look cleaner and last longer than exposed fastener systems, which use what I would normally call corrugated metal.

Technique and Tips
I have mentioned in previous posts the rainscreen wall system that I'm using. A rainscreen wall is one where the siding is separated from the Tyvek'ed wall by an air gap, so that when water gets behind the siding it can easily dry out. I stapled ~2" strips of 1/2" CDX plywood to the wall every 16" on center, oriented vertically, on areas of the house that would be clad in cedar. On areas to be clad in metal, I tended to staple the strips as I went, since in those areas I was working from side to side rather than from the bottom up.

(If I had been using vertically-oriented wood siding, as I've seen on some homes, then I would have had to think a lot harder about my rainscreen. It would be very simple to just attach the strips in a horizontal orientation, but one goal of the system is to allow water to drain out by gravity, and that would block drainage. I believe the appropriate compromise is diagonal strips.)

Precision pays off when the fastener is exposed

I fastened each piece of cedar siding with two 7d stainless steel ringshank siding nails every 16". You can't see in very well in the photos (it's more apparent in person), but the shiny, exposed nail heads are all lined up perfectly: evenly spaced in their rows, and the rows perfectly straight. How did I do it, you ask? Imagine I am now gesturing to the image on the right. Ta da! The handy dandy speed square was just the right size to line the working board's nails up with the previous board's top nail to get the straight line, and it has a ruler along that side to get precise spacing between nails. I used a nail tip to mark the spots, then hammered the nails in with a finish hammer. Finish nails, siding nails for example, have a textured head expressly so that you can hammer them with a smooth-faced finish (or trim) hammer and still get traction. And finish hammers have that smooth face so that when you miss and hit the piece of finish work--hey, it happens--it won't leave a crosshatched dent. I left plenty of smooth dents...

I used just over 5 lbs of nails. Some of those, however, were wasted when I hit a knot and bent them. I started out predrilling the nail holes, but that got old, and it neither helped drive nails in clear sections nor guaranteed success in knots. Also, drill bits for 7d nails (fairly thin) break very easily... and aren't always in stock at the local hardware store. Boo.

One problem I encountered with my siding was the old problem that began with the trailer being just slightly crooked. If the floor or bed of the trailer is level in the front of the trailer, it's just slightly out of level aft, and vice versa. Of course I was trying to impose straight lines on a non-straight structure that was also--hurray--my frame of reference for positioning those lines. I found myself continually making adjustments around the middle of the house. But when I step back and take in the big picture... it's not noticeable.

I'm holding off on installing the last pieces of metal siding, under the back rake, since that's where I will have two penetrations for venting (one for the exhaust fans, the other for the water heater). I think it will be easier to create and flash those penetrations prior to installing metal panels in the area. I will probably install a plate(s) of cedar flush against the wall and install the vents against it/them--more solid footing, and gets the vent clear of the siding.