This has been an exhausting weekend. We tackled the siding and soffets for the gable ends of the house, and man was it tiring! We started right after breakfast Saturday morning on the north side of the house. Because it was a little warmer outside, the previously frozen earth was now goopy, sloppy mud. Disgusting. We trudged through that all day, climbing ladders, measuring and cutting siding and soffet pieces, and then climbing back up the ladders to install them. And then repeating. Over and over and over again. Not fun at all. We took one 20 minute break for lunch, but other than that we worked non-stop. We kept all the siding in the back of Jas' truck, so it was easy to get to.
Jas built a table for cutting the siding and soffet material, which really came in handy both days.
See the clothes basket in the background? That had all Jas' tools in it. :) All professional siding installers use clothes baskets these days. :)
You know what we realized? Putting up siding is not complicated. This was our first experience with it, and we both thought it was easy to cut and install. But it's so stinkin' time-consuming. It took all day to do one side of the house! The hardest part was putting in the drip edge under the roof line, because the shingles were nailed down all the way to the edge. So Jas had to pull those up before he could put the drip edge in underneath. And that took quite a bit of time. We had two ladders, Yeller (the yellow one -- my ladder) and Old Shaky (the rickety one Jas climbed most of the time). I had to climb Old Shaky a few times, but I tried not to -- it rocks back and forth as you climb which makes you feel like you're going to fall off any second. :) Yeller "bounces" front to back, but that's not nearly as shaky feeling. So I claimed Yeller for myself and Jas had to use Old Shaky. We were so glad both of them made it through the weekend! :)
Sunday morning we started the south side. It had rained during the night, and so we were glad to be working on the side with the driveway. :) It was also incredibly blustery, so Jas' work on the roof was a lot more difficult than the day before. But we finally finished about 5 p.m.
All in all, we are very proud of the work we've done. This would have cost us quite a bit if we'd had professionals come and do it, and even though it made for an exhausting weekend, we're glad to have saved the money by doing it ourselves. That's a very satisfying feeling.
Here's Jas finishing the last piece on Sunday.
Jas has to finish the last three interior doors, which he plans to complete this week. Then all that's left is the painting and putting up the crown moulding. Our goal is to paint the living room/dining room/kitchen/hallway this weekend, and then finish with our master suite next weekend. Maybe we'll be done by the end of January. That would be AWESOME!!
** I apologize for not having more photos for this post, but I spent most of my time up on Old Yeller so I couldn't take very many pictures. :) These were taken with my phone.
