Year 2 - Day 234

At the first house viewing









Before the Wall of Cote










I shall call it The Wall of Cote. And it shall be so.

Siding day at the homestead.

The before photo is not quite accurate as I had taken more siding down but it's a good representation. Trimmed out the exterior of the window. Wasn't sure if you should do this before or after the siding but figured before as if I had to trim back the siding I might compromise the flashing so did that first. Didn't want to use the old trim in case it had lead-based paint and didn't fancy sanding and getting that dust everywhere.
Started off running one of Cote's siding lengths the whole way across under the window, checking for level and also measuring the exposed face to be sure it was consistent. At this point I realised that the kitchen sink vent pipe was just behind the sheathing and although my nails were going into the studs, just as a reminder I measured off where the vent pipe was in the wall and put a long piece of blue tape on the wall to remind me not to nail anything near there.
I anticipated having to buy some clapboard but started getting lucky: I had 5 lengths of siding that I had taken off and kept that were the perfect length - spot on perfect, no cutting - to fill the gap to the L of the window. This was great as it meant no wastage. So I mixed old and new siding using them to where they best fit without wastage which meant generally that one row was seamless and then the row above had a seam. Where the pieces were shorter I tried to keep these in the far corner were they would be less likely to be seen.
I notched the boards around the window using the SharkSaw. I am more and more impressed with that thing (apart from the fact that with it being double-edged if you catch it on your knee, for example, you get cut). I made what I would think are some tricky notches that I would normally need a jigsaw or something for (which I don't have) and the SharkSaw's flex allowed me to do these cuts with great precision.
Looked like I would need to buy 1 x 12ft length to finish the job but calculated and jiggled around what I had left and noticed that one row near the top had much less face exposed - 5.5" instead of 6.5" like the others - this was an old row so not by bad workmanship (;-D). This meant I could use a slightly crappy long old piece I had that I hadn't anticipated using because it had been notched to go around the old window and the notch went into the face area. So I chucked that up on the wall on the last row, tucking the notch under the board above so that it was covered and didn't show (got lucky there for sure) and that left a gap of about 2 ft in length to the corner. I just needed a piece to fill that space and I wouldn't have to buy any clapboard.
I only a 3" piece left from Cote's siding and all the other siding I ripped off was outside soaking wet from rain. I found one old offcut that was too short and then I remembered the piece I took to Cote's originally to compare siding sizes. Just had to find it. Eventually I tracked it down to the junk pile in the garage and, just like the 5 previous lengths that fit perfectly, this one did too, no cutting, just nail it up.
So the siding is done, just need to caulk the window trim and fill the old nail holes in the old stuff then prime the new siding. (And add a project to the list that we need to sand all this siding and repaint this and the entire screened in porch - eee gads!) why do you always cross one project off while adding 2 more?