The Siding is Going Up

We have ex-siding news! (Pun always intended.) Thanks to awesome friends and family who can watch JJ and let Josh work, we now have siding up on the additions, the back wall of the house, and most recently the new "front" of the house.

Josh decided to make a design change on the front wall to add shingles at the top and I love it!

Scaffolding: The Secret to Success

Josh has gone around the outside of the house 6 times by my last count. First to tear down and reframe the walls, then with tyvek, then foam layer #1, then foam layer #2 then furring strips and now siding. 

To help him move faster, Josh built his own scaffolding system that allowed him to place 4' x 8' sheets of Advantec sheathing on top of the porch roof. That allowed him to work on a ladder and even bring his saw up on the roof. He could spend more time measuring, cutting, and attaching siding and less time climbing up and down.

In this shot you can see the scaffolding as well as a few of the layers that are behind the siding (Tyvek and XPS foam insulation)

Josh had to remove the old blue shiplap siding (see the pile of detritus in front of the house) and install two layers of XPS foam. The foam insulation will allow the dew point of water to be outside of the house, which should mean we never have wet wood in our walls again. That in turn should mean we don't attract carpenter ants! For more info on this concept, check out Joe Lstiburek's website Building Science. 

Installing furring strips on top of 3 inches of foam to create a rain screen wall

On top of the Tyvek and 3 inches of XPS Josh installed furring strips (vertical pieces of wood). Those serve a twofold purpose. First the screws that attach the furring strips to the wall are what actually secures the foam in place (the foam is also taped together to seal it but the tape is not structural). Second the furring strips are the attachment point for the siding. They space the siding away from the wall and give the siding room to "breathe" and dry out from both sides. Often pine siding will warp when it is attached directly to a wall, because the outside gets wet and can try out, but the side attached to a wall can't dry as easily. Moisture imbalance causes expansion on one side of the wood siding, and warping results. Hopefully we can avoid that here! 

Josh ended up making a design change partway through, and had to pull off a few of the boards he installed so that he could put trim and cedar shake shingles up at the top of the wall. Originally the plan was to put a small roof over the second floor windows but after creating a computer model of the design Josh decided the spacing of the windows and pitch of the roof did not work together to make a roof over the windows look good. So we opted to get some shingles, and Josh put up a piece of trim to serve as a visual divider on the wall. 

Installing the furring strips to mount shingles to

I think the overall result is pretty nice, even if it is different than expected.

Josh now has both additions, the back wall, and the new front of the house sided. This week he is working on getting insulation and siding up on the front of the house above the porch roof. 

We could not do any of this without the help of family and friends. Our neighbor Barb has watched JJ several times (he now waves at her house every time we do a lap around our street!) and all of our parents have been into town. Plus my friend Liane visited from California. We've been trying to balance having fun and getting work done, and it seems to be striking the right tone so far. Thank you to everyone who has been praying and helping! If you have time and want to help, we will gladly accept. :)