Category: house (Page 5 of 8)

Well, after putting on the siding for the upper west side of the house, I decided to try to knock out the upper north side, given it was during Winter, which is from where most of the rains come, and that the water running off the main roof has a tendency to bounce back toward the house — something I hadn’t considered in the design. I guess the worst part is having to close the north and south upper windows if it rains, which is only a minor inconvenience.

First was the tar paper, which Sue and I are able to do:

And then the window trim. Once again, we’re using cedar fence slats for the siding, for aesthetics and durability:

And then the main courses for the siding. After climbing the ladder himself, here is foreman William, our cat, making sure I do a good job on things:

And here is some of the siding complete:

Here’s supervisor William up on the roof again with me. He had tried to jump up to the main roof, but didn’t quite make it; so I set him up there, and he went and took a look around:

And here is the upper north siding complete!

So that’s two upper sides done now, both of which I’m starting to paint with wood preserver.

We are once again very grateful to the Lord for granting the provisions to continue on the house, and safety while we are up there.

— David

The Lord has graciously supplied resources via help from others to be able to work on the external siding of our house. We’re very thankful to God and them to be able to begin to protect the most exposed under-siding areas, as the OSB only lasts so long in the elements.

First was the tar paper that Sue and I put up using a hammer stapler. We were told we should have put the windows in after the tar paper, but I guess it was a little late for that now. I suppose I should have applied some special tape to secure the tar paper to the window — perhaps I’ll plan to do that on the next ones:

I wanted siding that was durable, hopefully without having to paint it all of the time, but that could be used as lap siding because I like the look, and was not too expensive; and so I thought cedar fence slats just might accomplish the task. I also decided on using tan Deckmate screws, so if we needed to remove pieces easily we could, and because the tan color matches the boards nicely.

First was the window trim. For the bottom and top, I just ripped a slat (cut it length-wise) to fit the bottom, and then just used what was left on top, to try to save on slat usage. The trim is two boards thick — the under board corners are cut square to fit, and the top ones are miter-cut at angles for aesthetics, although with the funny (non-45 degree) angles, they didn’t end up joining together too nicely, but hopefully I’ll get better at that as I go. Because of the shape of the screws, I found I needed to drill pilot holes slightly using a 3/8 inch bit, so the screw head would sit nicely and not split the board; and I used 5 screws per full board, probably about 3/4 inch up from the bottom of the slat.

And because the window “flares” (the part that holds the window to the wall) stick out, and the top trim was so thin, I used shims to push the top of the trim piece a little more vertically level:

Here is the trim with the shims cropped:

And the window trim complete. All throughout the siding I tried to use copious amounts of clear silicone caulking:

With the corner trim, I ripped the outer boards in a way so as to be able to cover the overlapping of the under boards:

And here are the windows and corners done:

Here is the corner to window siding. I initially thought I would run a string all of the way across to try to keep each course level, but with the distance of 40 feet, the string sagged; and so I figured once I got above the windows, I could even things out as I went, making sure the first course above the windows was generally the same height on one end of the house and the other. I was also able to follow the line on the tar paper on this first course, which helped set things fairly straight:

Because I worried that the slats might shrink some over time, I wanted to have a decent overlap, and ended up going with 5 inches of each course visible (the slats are around 5 1/2 inches wide). Each board-join I bevel-cut at 45 degree angles to overlap each join, hopefully helping to keep more moisture out, and I caulked each join as well. Given some of the slats would have arcs in their width, I’d have to try to press them flat when running the sliding chop saw through them:

Here is the roofline trim. At one point in this area, I started caulking and realized I was using white caulking instead of clear. Arg. I tried to wipe it off with wet cloths as much as possible, but some is still there, although at least I did it in a place that’s somewhat generally hidden:

Here I am getting close to the top:

And here is the first side complete! We plan to paint it with clear wood protector, once the colors settle, since it appears some of the red tinting in the boards seems to fade away over time; and we might paint the trim a different color, just so it stands out a little. It’s an amateur job, but I’m an amateur. 🙂

Because of time restrictions, it took several months to do this, but we are very thankful again to the Lord for granting this progress on the house!

— David

Just a little update on a few things we’ve been able to continue on with the house, by God’s graces.

Front Screen Door

We’ve had these for some time (bought them with the windows and doors, and with the heat of summer, I wanted to at least try to get the front door screen installed.

Here’s the tar paper installed:

And for the frame, I decided to use cedar fence slats because of the longevity of cedar and the inexpensiveness of the slats. Since we’re planning on a form of lap siding for the house siding, with the fence slats being 1/2 inch thick, I needed to build out the frame by double stacking them (making the frame 1 inch thick).

Here’s the inner frame. I used tan deck screws to hold the pieces in place:

After putting up the entire outer frame, I checked the width measurements of the screen door, and discovered the frame on the inside of the door, being an inch thick, was going to make the screen door frame too small. After trying to fit the screen door in place, I found out I was correct…bummer. So, I took the outer frame pieces off from inside the door frame, and ripped them vertically on the table saw to slice them in half, making them about 1/4 inch thick instead. This ended up leaving table saw burn marks, which I had to belt-sand off, and made them thin, so they ended up splitting some when putting them back in place, even with pilot holes.

I believe for future ones, I would plan to just get 1-by cedar boards, which are going to be 3/4 inch thick, which is what I ended up needing.

And here is the screen door in place. We have found in other structures that when a partial screen door is wide open, it still allows much more air flow then when it’s closed, even if half of it is a screen; so I wanted something that was full-length screen. The screen is removable and can be replaced with a glass frame instead:

Here’s a look at the screen door frame:

And the base plate:

And the door sweep:

And the nice view from the inside!

We’re thankful to the Lord for these screen doors, and for the air flow they allow.

Bedroom Ceiling Insulation

In trying to continue with the bedroom, in hopes of being able to at least sleep there during the winter, and since we had the ceiling panels in place, it was time to start getting some ceiling insulation in place.

Here is some of the R30 rolled out. Maneuvering the big rolls of insulation in the trusses while trying to make sure to only walk on the trusses, and having to lay down to get the insulation in place at the low end of the trusses, was a little more difficult that anticipated. Some of the grommeted screws from the roof metal got my shirt and the top of my head 🙂 :

Since the truss-end blocks are vented, we needed a way to push the 9-inch or so insulation down, so the vents wouldn’t be blocked. They have these foam baffles, but they just seemed so flimsy that they wouldn’t press the insulation down enough. While in that area of Home Depot, trying to figure out what I was going to do, I found some metal leaf guards for rain gutters that sort of have a lattice pattern; and in looking at them, their flexibility and tensile strength, I thought maybe they might work:

I tried cutting one at 1-inch wide, but that wasn’t strong enough to keep the insulation pressed down. And so I tried just cutting the 6-inch guards in half, about 22 1/2 inches long (after trying 24 and 23 1/4 inches), basically cutting off 6 half-lattice sections back; and after cupping them from end to end, I found they would keep the insulation pressed down:

Getting far enough out the low end of the trusses to be able to place the insulation stays was interesting. I used a small OSB board to lay on across the trusses, and while laying there, with the roof so close above that I could barely turn my head, I had to reach out arms length to press the metal stay in place. It sometimes took some messing with, and sometimes pulling it out and re-shaping the the stays, but I was able to get them to hold:

With the the insulation right by the vent held down, I needed it to be pressed down just a bit more, a little farther back, so I took these left-over OSB strips and just slid them all the way to the corner of the horizontal and angled truss boards:

Thanks again to the Lord for the insulation and the stays idea.

Extra Foundation Beam Support Brackets

For some time, given how I designed the foundation beams and the weight of the house, I’ve been a little worried about the overhang of the beams over the piers. I have tried to think back as to why I did that, not putting the pier right under the beam end, and I think I had felt I needed to have the whole pier under the floor footprint, I think because I thought a barrier would need to extend from the wall straight down to the ground, but that wouldn’t have worked anyway, given that some of the wide bases of the concrete piers were above ground. At any rate, I had been trying to think of how to support underneath the beam overhangs, and then in struck me one day that I could probably slide into place another bracket like the ones bolted to the piers, just the 4×4 ones instead of the 4×6 I had already used. And so, over time, I’ve been trying to collect them, and slowly install them under each overhang, starting with the corners, which I figured were the most critical and most load-bearing.

To get them to slide in, I had to sometimes chisel out a little of the bottom of the beam, and then often would have to hammer them into place using a piece of 1/2-inch re-bar:

Sometimes the bracket would get caught on some uneven concrete under the termite shield, and I’d have to hammer it back out:

And sometimes it would end up contorted, so I’d have to re-shape it:

But finally, on this one, after chiseling out some of the wood, I was actually able to slide it into place by hand:

Hopefully these brackets will help any potential beam overhang problem, and not cause any unforeseen problems, and I’m thankful to God for the idea.

First Drapes

With the sun slowly moving south as we head out of summer, it started shining into the house on our working table, and so Sue took some pieces of drapery-type material we had been given, hooked on some drape-rod rings, and we put up some light drapes that at least cast some shade. These are only temporary, but did seem to help against some of the heat from the direct sunlight:

And we thank the Lord for this quick and inexpensive thing we could do.

Once again, we are very grateful to God for allowing the resources and strength to continue this progress on the house!

— David

With the external windows and doors installed, and with winter coming upon us, I figured it was time to secure the various roof lines as planned, to help against any snow loads we might have and any high north winds as can often happen with those cold fronts that run through.

For roof load of the porch, I still needed to tie the rafter header board to the house, and for this I used 4×1/2 inch lag screws with a washer, drilling a 3/8 inch pilot hole into wall studs, placing them 4 feet apart or so:

I also added ties for the rafters to the header board. These were the less expensive ones but also had a gusset to help keep them from bending and thus hopefully keep the rafters more tightly against the header board. I used 1 1/2 inch 9 gauge exterior galvanized joint hanger nails to attach them, and for now, I decided to at least get one in place for every other rafter, hopefully to someday put on on each:

And I added some angled ties to the rafters that join at the hip rafter:

As for the winds, I used hurricane clips for the porch roof rafters, tying them to the cross posts:

And inside, on the main roof, tying the trusses to the pony wall top plates. To make sure the tie twist was hidden in the roof area, I put them on the left side. I started by hammering one nail into the bottom part, then placed all the nails in the top part, and then finished by filling in the bottom. Also, the top part of the tie was right where the truss metal gussets are, and so I had to hold the nail with my right hand trying to bend the top of the tie back, and then hammer through the gusset with my left hand, and being right-handed, that sometimes had some quite painful results. 🙂 :

Hopefully these will help against most of the weather issues we might face, as the Lord wills.

We are thankful once again to God for allowing us to continue progress on the house.

— David

After the porch roofing was complete, it was on to the windows and doors! Since our cooling and heating is through conventional means, I decided to go with double-paned, LowE windows.

For this part of the house, I was definitely going to need some help; and so during a couple of our first Wednesday of the month community work days, the guys came over, and we started installing.

The most important windows were the pony wall windows above the porch roof, because once those were in, we could be generally rain-free inside the house. Each window was caulked, and we used deck screws on every other hole in the window frame’s “flares” that attach to the wall:

And then we worked on the lower floor windows:

And here are the windows installed! The pony wall windows:

And the south bedroom windows:

And the east library windows:

Once the windows were done, we worked on the doors. Those are always interesting to do, because you have various things to try to maintain as you get the door into place — that it’s at least somewhat level, that it’s plumb, square, and not torqued or twisted, using shims to accomplish and hold the door in place in the door frame. Interestingly, the first door we did went in without having to work very hard; but it ended up that we should have installed the door knob and hardware first, because when I did that after, the door latches didn’t match, and I had to re-do that entire door. 🙂 Arg…but, lesson learned!

We’re once again very thankful to the Lord for granting that we be able to progress on the house, and we are grateful to God and to the brethren for the help in this process.

— David