Status - no pics

A couple of days ago we finished the upstairs prep work (painting, caulking, new end boards, etc.) We put up some blue board on the upper portion two days ago (1/4 foam board - R1) and Dad finished it yesterday. Last night we went to pick up a used joiner for Dad (thanks to craigslist.org).

Today we picked up another ladder, put up the Tyvek, and set up the ladder jacks. So, tomorrow we should be able to start putting up boards again.

Above the windows we have to remove the boards, replace the gable vent, replace and paint the new gable soffit boards, put up tyvek and then put up the rest of the boards. Then, on to the front of the house.

Leftovers

HardiPlank cost $1000 delivered from Home Depot for what they call 1/2 pallet (I just call it a pallet) of 108 prepainted planks. Each 12 foot board with 6 inch reveal covers 6 square feet, so the pallet covers 648 square feet. It'll take about 3 pallets for our house, maybe 4.

I think my dad's house took 3 pallets with 30 full length boards left over. He posted his leftover planks on craigslist.org and had a buyer the next day. But the guy backed out because his wife wants him to build a 2 car garage instead of residing his one car garage. Dad re-posted and he had another buyer the next day, and this one showed up and hauled them away. We were all surprised. Had they not sold, we would have used them on our shed.

Got Gas?

Last fall, the gas compnay replaced of the gas lines in our neighborhood. They did HORRIBLE work on our house. The yard looked terrible. All of the roots they left sticking out of ground looked like dead people sticking their boney hands out of the ground. Around the meter, we had a couple of inches of decorative rocks instead of plants or mulch. But they turned them into the ground, so now I have rocky soil that I can't plant in either. They left trash in the yard. Shoveled dirt onto the AC pad (a little getting on the AC unit). They broke the pipe inside the house when reconnecting the meter. Then, they cut this extra large hole in the siding. How am I supposed to keep water, or rats from entering this hole? Gee, they were nice enough to put some white fluffy stuff for the rats to use as bedding.

If I hadn't been planning to replace the siding this year, I would'v been upset. I was mostly bothered by the slopiness compared to the work they did on most of the houses in the neighborhood.

Improvise

Whatever the project, you'd better schedule time to improvise. This was our second little problem that came up (first being the no-insulation place where the fireplace would have been - earlier post).

This was shimmed out because on the other side of this corner board, it meets the brick on the front of the house, but the bricks weren't parallel with the wall. We decided to fill the gap and caulk it since from the front the problem would be more obvious. The dust on the boards really shows. This stuff blows a lot of dust when you cut it, so wear a mask or hold your breath during short cuts.

Now we have a big problem. I had two pallets of Hardi Plank (fiber cement board) running along the driveway. The boards slowly began sliding down the hill. At first I put a door in front of them and two garbage cans full of water. That slowed it down a lot (lasted for a month), but it finally gave way and as you can see, boards slid off completely. Also you can see mid-way up, under the stack are some bricks where I had jacked it up a little when I first noticed it sliding - oops not enough.

Four at a time, we moved the worse stack to a new pallet that we fortunately had from my dad's house.

This is what we ended up with. We jacked th heck out of it until it was level, or just a little high on this side. We jacked up the other pallet with a hydrolic jack. They hadn't slid off quite as much. But, I hurt my back trying to slide large numbers of boards back into place.

Cheaper than curtains.

I may have discovered a cheaper solution than those expensive curtains my wife wants to buy. This lets light in and provides privacy at the same time.

We added the corner board, but we added tyvek all the way up around the corner first. We had to cut away a narrow strip of siding on the back side fo the house (not shown) to do this.

Finally! It's starting to take shape. I love it when a plan comes together.

Siding project started

We finally started work replacing the siding of our 1968 house. We're using HardiPlank, factory painted Woodstock Brown. The material lasts 50 years and is repaintable, unlike most vinyl siding. The factory paint is guaranteed against cracks and peeling for 15 years. Anyway, here's the story.

It didn't take long before we found this spot with NO insulation.

After opening it up, we concluded that it's where the second fireplace would have gone had the buyer chosen this option. We added insulation and insulation board and it was as better than new. But what else will we find?