Shingled My Last Shingle

At least for this project anyway. All that's left is caulk the corners and some paint. Time to make some doors...

Insert Witty Shingle Post Title Here

I've been posting about shingles far too long now... I'm out of post titles!

Well the 3rd side is finally finished and I'm half way done the back. I also trimmed out and added a vent to the back wall. Maybe by the end of the week I should be making doors and a ramp.

Ready For A Photo

Arbors are stained, beds weeded, new mulch, new mums, pink flamingos put away, even cut the grass for a change! Ready to be photographed... ok house, say cheese

Already Filling the Cupboard

Well not that I'm complaining, but the garden has really been eating up my extra time lately. This canning biz has been working out even better than I thought as you can see! I picked up a second hand pressure canner pretty cheap so I could process low acid garden goodies too. But this winter it will be great to open up a can of garden bounty... good thing I added the extra cupboard, it's filling up already!


Well the summer finally brought some rain this week, so that slowed the progress on cleaning up the front for pics. The arbors should be finished today. I have a little more cleanup and I may make a mulch run.

The shed is at a standstill for the moment but I should get back to that shortly. I'm a few rows up on the 3rd side.


The car decided to break too... add that to the list. Guess I'll never be able to claim boredom, my friends will call BS on that everytime!

And that poor kitchen, way on the back burner yet again... it'll probably be the last room to ever be finished!

Maybe I Should Have Ordered White

So I'm trying to get the front ready to be photograghed and one backlisted project was staining the arbors. The plan was to get these both stained and work on cleaning up the beds so I can get some mulch tomorrow. Well, 4 hours later I finally finished one arbor! Then the rain started. So looks like another 4 for the second arbor which will then be good enough for pics, but I will have to come back and give them a second coat. That's 16 hrs - I think springing for the pre-stained ones would have been worth the extra money! Oh well, put the saved money in the kitchen fund...

OK, I'll Spill It

It is official... the Hall House (and I guess me too!) is the 2010 winner of the Ridley Park Historical Society Preservation Award!

So what is that exactly? Well once a year anyone in the community can nominate a house that they feel is worthy of the Preservation Award, several finalists are picked, and then judged for a winner. The winner receives a plaque for the house which remains with the house. A picture of each winning house hangs in the town hall too. I will be presented with the plaque at the Ridley Park Victorian Fair on Sept 11 down at the lake. Guess I better clean up the front yard!

Here's some past winners...

www.ridleyparkhistorical.org/houses.html

And last years winner...

ridleyparkhistorical.org/index.html

Rain Delay...

A bit busy lately and now the weather is not cooperating, but the shingle work is progressing. Guess I'll work on the kitchen today and tomorrow.

It's a Major Award...

And this time it's not a leg lamp! Stay tuned...

From Shake to Shingle

The roof is finally done. I did run into a problem with ridge capping. There was just too much variation in thickness and shape to weave the shake edges.... so I cheated. I added a layer of self stick rubber flashing over the ridge, then just butted the edges together. The rubber will shed any water that gets through to the lower roof shingles.


Then I started installing the shingle siding. These are SO much easier to work with!!

Plan B

Well I found out the hard way that Lowes no longer stocks the Hardiplank I was going to use. So I can either order and wait... or do all of the siding with the leftover shakes from the house. Though that will take longer to do than throwing up clapboard siding, it will still look nice, not cost me a dime, and I won't have to worry about storing all these stinkin leftovers!


So that's the new plan. Meanwhile, the roof is all shaked now except for the ridge capping.

In you were wondering how I did the shaking at the pitch change, basically I kept hanging full shingles till the top course was installed for the lover section of roof. Then I just used a skill saw and ripped them down to the correct length in one shot. The biggest thing to watch out for is setting the depth of the saw blade, cause you don't want to cut the tar paper underneath. I set it a little shallow, then broke off the lower layer of shakes at the cut line.



Then I ran another starter course with an edge cut to a 45 degree angle to meet the lower line of shakes. The finish course goes on top and extends over the lower shakes about a half inch. Then you can continue on to the peak. There may be better ways to do this, but I coudn't find anything online and just went with the basic principles of shedding water. There shouldn't be any leaks.

Normal People Would Have a Shed Delivered...

I guess you can tell by now that just ain't me... where's the fun in that?! Well the roof is half way shaked... At least I don't have to paint these. Ok, enough blogging, back to shakin!

Shake Puzzle

Well this roof is making the house siding project look easy! It looks great finished, but every single shake is different in size, shape, thickness, etc... and it takes picking through the pile to find just the right match to the last shake you installed. Adding two different pitches doesn't make life easier either. But it will be awesome when it's finished. The change in pitch also requires another starter course of shakes to add to the challenge. I can't imagine doing an entire house with these!



The trim work is all finished too now.

Canning Biz

Of course when I'm in the middle of two big projects is when the garden starts going crazy.... guess I asked for it! The last two years I just blanched and froze extra crops, but you're really limited to what you can do. So this year I bit the bullet and tried canning. Ended up not being that hard at all, a little time consuming, but easier than I thought. So my first try was dill pickles. After that went well I took my first big batch of roma tomatoes and did salsa. Another big batch cukes came in so I wanted to do more dills, but somebody bought the wrong seasoning pack, so ended up making bread & butter slices.





From the looks of things there's more where that came from!

Trim Here and a Shingle There

I started triming out the shed and experiment with how I want to shake the roof. The trim is all pvc = no rot. I really want to get a roof on asap with the weather calling for chance of rain this week, but to do so I need to install some of the trim so I know how to extend my shakes.

After getting the top trim piece installed, I ran a starter course of standard shakes left over from the house.


Then a finish row of the red cedar shakes. I picked these up over 2 years ago for a great price. These are about as rustic as they come, nothing is square, one side smooth, other side rough cut. I'm doing an 8 inch reveal which will keep all the coarses even up to the change in pitch of the roof. The hardest part with these is picking through the pile to find a match in shape and width to the previous one you just installed

Here's what I did so far...