Pretty hard to see in this picture, but that's a very large V of birds migrating South for the winter. We can't follow suit, so now it's getting really quite cold to work outside, and also getting dark really early (by about 5 o'clock, we need head lamps to work).
Doing the rake trim here...in the miserably cold, dangerously slippery rain.
And this is what working on the roof looks like at about 5:30pm (that is, pitch black without the camera flash).
Some of the final trim pieces are rather complicated, but when everything is cut, taped, screwed, riveted, folded, and hammered in just the right order, the end result is a (relatively) clean look...and most importantly, has no fasteners penetrating directly through the panels into the underlayment.
Here's one of the final pieces of the roof: the Z-Closures. Sadly the tape is not color-matched so it stands out a bit, but we may try and paint those little bits of white to match in the spring (when it's actually within the correct temperature range for paint to dry again). A day more of work after this photo was taken, we finished the trim, so the roof is officially done now.
On to other projects! This is the very first piece of interior work on the house: a loft joist. We opted for 1.5 inch square tube steel rather than 2x4s laid on edge, because these give us two extra inches of head room but are just as strong (at least).
Looking through my photos I realize there are several shots I should have taken but forgot. So, I don't have a good picture of the lofts: they now have almost all the tube steel up. So, we'll just have to continue on to this: finishing battens on the South wall. And if you look closely, you can see the window on the right has trim in place now.
Here's a closeup of the window trim. We decided to go with only 3/4 inch trim around the windows and door, partly because laying trim on end like this allows us to cover up the extra width of rigid insulation that sticks out past the edge of the window itself (this only became an issue because the windows are flashed to the Tyvek which is behind the insulation).
This is a closeup of the bottom edge of the battens. We tucked fiberglass insect screen behind the battens...
...then folded and stapled it around the batten end as shown. This creates a barrier preventing insects/birds/other critters from crawling up into the rainscreen gap behind the siding.
With battens, trim, and insect screen in place, we put up the very first piece of siding!
And despite the cold, several friends came to help put up siding on Saturday (and one on Sunday, too!) Thanks, everyone!
Progress on the southeast corner.
And here's the state of the South wall about mid-day Sunday.
Sadly, there are again photos missing of other progress that happened this weekend. The siding now extends up to the underside of the windows on the South wall (all the way across), and while some people were working on that, others hung the insulation and battens on the entire West wall, and made some serious progress on the North wall as well! There's still plenty more to do, as always, but I think we're on track to finish the exterior in a few more weekends, provided we can muster the motivation to work in the dark, sub-freezing weather some more :)
