West Gable Wall Siding continued...
As I mentioned, today I was going to pick up where I left off getting those LONGGGG Cypress boards up on the west gable wall. I was just past the office window yesterday when I quit. Today I made it to the bathroom window:
Those long boards are sure giving me a run for my money alone. It took me almost FORTY FIVE MINUTES to get one 14' board in place and nailed. It had to be set about 8' off the ground, which meant I was on a ladder...
And once I got it in place, I had to let go with one hand to get the framing nailer to nail it in place. Well, Murphy spent a large part of the day with me today. That 14' board got dropped not once, but twice, from 8' up a ladder. And once, Murphy thought it would be funny to see what would happen if the board hit me in the head on the way down. I wasn't laughing!
I finally got it in place and nailed on the third attempt, and was able to keep moving along.
I did have a little bit of help today. I did all the nailing I could from the low end of the ladder, and when I had a few boards in place, I called my up-high helper to come nail in the tops:
That's Denise shooting nails in the upper parts of the boards I got in place. Am I lucky or what?
In addition to the pure logistics of hoisting those long boards up, holding on one-handed while I shoot nails into them to keep them from falling, here's another problem I keep facing:
I'm doing everything I can to get every joint along the windows PERFECT. I'm not talking close, I'm talking perfect. I'm probably wasting a lot of time I don't need to, since this is after all WOOD, and it WILL be moving as it settles in place.
As tod would tell me, IT'S CONSTRUCTION, STOP IT!
I'm trying...but the perfectionist in me has a hard time being satisfied with less...
Oh, and in case you think all I got done was half a dozen more boards up on the wall, here's a few shots to show you otherwise...
That's the next dozen 14' and 16' boards lined up on my 16' sawhorses ready for stain. As I explained, I stain the backs with the semi-transparent oil based stuff that I wanted to spray but that doesn't cover well, and then apply the solid color acrylic to the fronts.
Here's what one heavy coat of the semi-transparent oil-based looks like after being ROLLED on:
As you can see, it's pretty bad. All the blemishes show right through. I thought you'd be able to see the graders marks, but they didn't come out in the pictures. But you can sure see the saw burns and forklift marks clearly. For reference, that's better than what two sprayed on coats looked like!
For comparison, here's half the boards done on the back with semi-transparent, and half of them after I flipped them and rolled on one coat of solid color:
And here's all the boards with one coat of rolled solid color:
Quite a difference! You can't see any of the blemishes once the solid stuff is on there. And the color is consistant across the boards...another thing the semi-transparent stuff wouldn't accomplish!
(I'm going to have to get creative to be able to use that one board, huh? Looks like it's trying to volunteer to be part of a boat bottom!
)
In that last picture, you can see an empty 5-gallon bucket of stain. That's the third 5 gallon pail. At the rate we're going, I'm thinking we should be able to get the job finished with a total of 20 gallons. (We might need one or two more single gallons, we'll see.) Quite a bit better than the 100 gallon we would have needed if we stayed with the semi-transparent stuff!
Ok, there you have it...my first 'daily' update in a quite some time. As you can tell, I'm back to the level of detail I was at before. Hopefully it's not too much detail!
Tomorrow I'm back on that gable wall. I'm hoping it gets a little easier for the next few boards, since I'll have the bathroom window to rest them on while I'm trying to get them nailed in. We'll see.
Thanks for following...
- Marty -
