Greetings again Acre-Heads!  It has been a while since my last post.  It is not that I have not been working on the Shack, but I have been too lazy to post about it.  Also, my travel schedule has been hell the past several months, so our weekly progress has been pretty slow.  It was only after re-reading my last post from March that I realized we have actually accomplished quite a bit since then.

Once we got all of the OSB and Tyvek up on the walls, our next step was to get ladders built for the gables.

The ladders were obviously real easy to build.  But getting them nailed up in place was a different matter.

I got them up and nailed in place in what I thought was pretty straight.  But when I went to put the plywood decking on, I discovered there was almost an inch of runout between the peak of the roof and the corners!  That did not make me happy, but I was not about to redo the roofing system to get it perfect.  So I decided to make up the difference with the gable trim and metal roofing.  That turned out to not be a great decision, but more on that in a few paragraphs.

Next up was getting the plywood decking on the roof.  That was kind of a pain because the trusses had been out in the sun for several weeks by the time I got to the plywood and they had warped.  I am amazed at how quickly the sun will warp boards in the desert.  In Minnesota, I always worried about the rain (and snow) warping wood, but never the sun.  In Arizona, it is the exact opposite.

So it took longer than it should have to get the plywood up and nailed down, but we got it done and got the roof somewhat more square.  (But that was only the beginning of the fun with the plywood.)

The next step was to get the windows and door installed.

I got a pleasant surprise with the windows!  Windows have gotten a WHOLE lot better and a whole lot cheaper since I replaced all the windows in our Minnesota house!  When I replaced the windows in our Minnesota house, they were over $400 each and most of them were just 4 X 4 foot.  The Art Shack has 2 – 4 X 4 foot and 1 – 4 X 6 foot and none of them were even $200!  Furthermore, the insulation value of these wiener desert windows is higher than the windows I put in our Northern Tunda Minnesota house!

Also, I am really, really impressed with the new flashing material they make for installing windows and doors.  Previously, I had always used 10# tar paper for windows and doors.  We found some kind of synthetic stuff at Home Depot that has sticky on the back (so no nailing required) and it is absolutely 100% air and water tight!  These may sound like minor things, but building technology has advanced exponentially in the last decade!

By the time we got the plywood roof decking up and the windows and door in, it was the end of April and we were concerned about the spring rains coming, so I decided to get some tar paper on the plywood to at least give it a modicum of protection from the rains.

Unfortunately, the rains were preceded by about a week of 40 MPH winds that ripped every square inch of tar paper off the shack!  That was followed by about 4 solid days slow, soaking rain followed by about a week of bright, hot scorching sun!  In other words,  Mama Nature first tore off any protection we had for the plywood, then gave us the absolute WORST combination of weather for protecting the plywood!

We had two full sheets of plywood that got ruined and had to be replaced.  On the upside, I found out well my framing nailer nailed things down. – Too well, it took forever to pry the nails out to be able to set the new plywood.  In the end, however, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  I used tar paper for the roof underlayment because that is all I had ever used in the past.  It turns out that Owens Corning makes a synthetic roofing membrane that is 1000 times better than tar paper, plus it is cheaper and easier to work with!

After getting the windows and door installed, it was time to get the trim on the gables and soffits.  I wanted the trim to match the posts and beams which are rough sawn fir.  Unfortunately, finding rough sawn fir in 4/4, in the desert is impossible.  After talking to my local lumber guy, he assured me they could resaw 8/4 stock into 4/4 stock, no problem.

It turned out to be “sort of” 4/4 stock.  Some was an inch thick, some was 1/2 inch thick and some was 1 1/4 inches thick – and that was all on one board!  Needless to say, getting it up and looking decent was a serious pain in the neck.  But eventually we got it.

After placing the order and waiting almost 3 weeks, the materials for the roof finally came in!  I had never done metal roofing before, so I was a little intimidated by that.  It turned out to be a lot easier than I thought.  The only problem with it was we decided to do it on a day with about a 20 MPH constant wind with gusts considerably higher.  However, we did eventually get the roof on and it looks pretty good.

 

We could not put the ridge cap on right away because they had shorted us on the gasket material that goes between the ridge cap and the roofing.  So, place another order and wait another week for a $1.10 gasket to show up in the mail.  GRRR!!!

Once the ridge cap gasket came, it was only a matter of an hour’s work to finish the roof.

Then, it was onto siding…

We decided to go with fiber cement siding panels.  This stuff is supposed to be the best “nail on” siding you can buy, but it is a nightmare to work with.

I made a huge mistake buying the siding however.  When we were building the house, I was buying a lot of materials at Home Depot, so I set up an account with their Pro Desk.  That allowed me to not have to deal with the retail pukes working there, who know next to nothing.  I was able to work with the folks at the Pro Desk who all had several years experience in the trades and could answer my questions.

I went to buy the siding on a Saturday (when the Pro Desk was closed).  Since I have never worked with cement fiber board before, I had a BUNCH of questions: What is the best way to cut it?  Can I just use a pneumatic nail gun with 2 inch nails to hang it? etc.  The retail puke I spoke to suggested that I screw it up with deck screws and just use a plain wood saw blade in my Skilsaw to cut it.

Yes, both of those ideas did work.  But they proved to be far more work than my original plan.  First, using a regular wood saw blade does cut it well for about 7 cuts.  Then the blade dulls so quickly that getting accurate cuts is nearly impossible.  They do make a special blade specifically for fiber cement board.  It is expensive, about $40, but it does not dull and is very accurate.  Second, screwing it up with deck screws requires each screw to have a pilot hole, whereas a framing nailer with 2 inch nails work fine as long as you stay more than an inch from the edge.

Regardless, we got them up, along with the trim boards and they came out looking really good I think.

The only really awful part was doing the ceiling of the porch.  The Hardie panels weigh about 70 pounds each and they are really brittle and prone to break if bent too much.  Two of us trying to lift that into place and hold it while drilling and screwing it would have been next to impossible.  So I broke down and bought a sheetrock lift so we could just set it on the lift, crank the lift up to height and position it, then drill and screw.  It worked great.

We will also use it when we sheetrock the ceiling, so it was not money wasted.

So all that is left on the outside is to do the second coat of caulk on all the seams and around the windows and door, then paint.  Since I am traveling for work over the next two weeks, Tina is going to get everything caulked so we can give it a good 3-4 days to fully dry.  Then when I am finally home for more than 36 hours, we will paint, then start on the inside!