FINALLY! The shingling is done

I've been distracted with work, so the practice house has been languishing the past few weeks.  Guess I can't complain--after four months focused on the house, the inflow of cash had been dwindling.  But I've managed to get all the cedar shingles up:

I think every shingle in this little triangle needed to be trimmed in some way except for three.  Five hours later, it's looking good!

And now the shingling is all finished!

And one other small note, the electric company extended service to the new place and installed a meter.  This is the first one I've seen that read zero!

Adventures in Shingling

So after the rain event, I had eight working days to make as much progress installing the cedar shingles as possible before leaving on vacation.  Sure, it's been 25 years since I last did any shingling, but I thought I could make a good bit of progress.  True, I needed the framing guys to install all the trim, and I wanted to pre-paint it while it was easier before the shingles went up.

28 bundles of shingles

I just about broke my trailer getting the shingles back from the building supply store.  Luckily, they are about 1/10 of a mile from home.

Well as usual, life and work got in the way, and I had to keep revising down my expectation for how much of the house I'd get covered.  In the end, I finished the north wall, and told the framers that if they have some extra time in between other projects, they were free to come down and make whatever progress they could make.

So upon returning from vacation, this is what I found--like someone had picked up my little shack and replaced it with a finished home!

This was a total thrill to see!  There's still a little left do do on the west side.  See that little unfinished bit on the gable?  That took over 6 hours to wrap up yesterday.  I do good work, but I'm slow.  I figure I must have gone up and down the ladder to the roof about 80 times, so if nothing else I got a good workout!

Tar Paper Before the Storm

Sorry for the delayed posting--I got distracted by a much needed vacation!  Rewinding the clock about a month, though, East Coast folks may remember a five days of cold, damp drizzle that culminated in a nor'easter.  That week, I was in major stress mode trying to get the tar paper up to keep the sheathing dry.  I managed to do it in between damper periods, working solo.  Thank goodness for my well-behaved hammer stapler and long overhangs that kept the walls relatively dry even during the light precipitation.  Here's how it looked as of Thursday October 1, just before the major rain moved in that night.

With the house in a short-lived stealth mode, I was ready for the forecast 5-7 inches of rain with tarps, to avoid erosion under the eaves and haybale check dams to slow down the flow of water along the driveway in front of the house.  Luckily, we didn't get nearly that much precip, and it ended up being a slow steady rain rather than a gully-washer.