Day 195: Roofing

Saturday

We've been excited to get the roof going for some time. Now that we've got the underlayment on and have a spell of good weather, we're moving forward with the roof. We decided to go with a metal roof. We like the look of standing seam, but not the price, especially the installed price, which can be five to ten times the cost of the price of a regular shingle roof. To keep costs down, I decided to do the installation myself. I also looked at manufacturers who are based in Kansas City to cut down shipping costs. We located a supplier and found a roof profile that combined the standing seam look with an easy-to-install process. It's called a SnapLock profile.

First, we installed the drip edge around the roof. Then, each piece of roof is notched and bent to create a notch to slide over the drip edge. Clips are then screwed in place to hold the edge down. The next piece snaps over the top of the clip, concealing the fasteners. I only had about 3 hours between football and a church meeting to roof, so we didn't get to far, completing most of the east end of the 4/12 pitch. Big thanks to Reed, Mandy, Steve, Matt and Max for helping.

Daily Stats		Hours Worked			Cost
	Day	Trevor	Family/Friends	Contractors
Today	195	4	7	9
All Time	195	222	254	1327.5	$13,496.75
Summary of 10/18/2014		Work Done Today
		Caulking siding, roof panels over garage
		Materials Used Today
		Roof
		Who Helped Today
		Matt, Mandy, Reed, Steve
		Contractors On Site
		Max Bingham

Day 191: Exterior Siding

We studied out a lot of different siding options. We really liked the hand-hewn chinked log look from one of our inspiration houses, but the faux log siding was both expensive and impractical. We also liked the natural look from another of our inspiration houses.

We had a few criteria. First, the exterior needed to fit the rural, country setting. Second, it had to fit our budget. Third, it had to be something that I could put on myself. And fourth, we wanted it to be as maintenance free as possible.

Unfortunately, those criteria are not always found in the same product. We looked at faux log siding, cedar siding, LP SmartSide, vinyl, fiber cement board, and others. We liked the look of the faux log siding and considered making it ourselves, but the cost, longevity, and amount of labor required talked us out if it. We ruled out vinyl as it's not really the look and feel we wanted. Fiber cement was supposedly too difficult to install. That left LP SmartSide and cedar siding. We we decided to go with both.

The cedar siding fits the natural, rural feel we're after, but it also doesn't weather well. So we decided to put it on the areas of our house that are covered by porch overhangs: the two front porches and the back porch/deck wall. We also will put it on the east garage wall to give the house a consistent feel. the kitchen area, gable ends, and dormer will have LP SmartSide in a board and batten look. The west wall and south garage wall, both of which will take a sun beating, will also be in the board and batten look. We're achieving the board and batten look by using 4x8 sheets of soffit sheeting and 1x3 LP SmartTrim boards.

Reed helped get the drip edge lined up along the bottom of the siding area before we put the first run up.

I used a self-leveling laser level to line up the trim boards that we were using to create the board and batten look. It helped that we were working after dark, as the laser lines are much more visible than they are during the day.

Daily Stats		Hours Worked			Cost
	Day	Trevor	Family/Friends	Contractors
Today	191	4	2	0
All Time	191	222	254	1327.5	$13,496.75
Summary of 10/14/2014		Work Done Today
		Board and batten siding
		Materials Used Today
		siding
		Who Helped Today
		Mandy
		Contractors On Site

Day 185: Weathered In

The first couple of weeks of October brought a lot of rain. In fact, half-way through October and it had already been the second rainiest October on record. Not a good thing when you're trying to build a house and it's not quite weathered in. I spent a lot of time with a shop vac repeatedly sucking up water to keep things dry in between rain storms.

When weather finally let up a bit, and the back porch roof was put on, we were able to get the roof underlayment on to more-or-less weather the house in. We're doing a metal roof, so we used a special synthetic underlayment. We also used a sticky-back (self-adhesive) underlayment around the eaves, over the hips and ridges, in the valleys, and where to roof meets the walls.

Daily Stats		Hours Worked			Cost
	Day	Trevor	Family/Friends	Contractors
Today	185	4	4	16
All Time	185	222	254	1327.5	$13,496.75
Summary of 10/8/2014		Work Done Today
		Roof underlayment, ductwork
		Materials Used Today
		Who Helped Today
		Steve
		Contractors On Site
		ECS