Day 177: Siding Staining

Tuesday

Tuesday was a predetermined all-out, go crazy work day. I took the day off from work and recruited some help. Steve, Kim, Mandy, Tom, Jennifer, Krista, Matt and Amber were all crazy enough to sign up (or be tricked into) helping. We had about 4,100 linear feet of cedar bevel siding that needed stained. I opted to use Sikkens CRD stain, Cedar color.

With cedar bevel siding, it's important to stain all 6 sides of the siding. Rather than brush or roll it on, we set up a manufacturing operation to dip the boards. I built a trough out of 2x12 boards and lined it with plastic sheeting. We then poured about 40 gallons of stain into the trough. With all the help that showed up, we set up a process. We had sanders, dippers, and squeegee-ers.

Sanders. Each board needed sanded with 80 grit sand paper to prep for staining. Each board had a smooth side and a rough cut side. The smooth side just needed a light sanding, while the rough side needed a bit more sanding to knock off some of the cedar "hairs". After sanding, both sides needed to have the dust removed. We did this by blowing the boards with compressed air.

Dippers. Each board was 16 feet long. We had two individuals, dippers, hold the boards and dip them half-way into the stain. The board was then rotated and dipped to cover the other half. The dippers held the board for the sqeegee-ers (read below), and then carried the boards into the house and placed them on drying racks. Note: We built drying racks by nailing 6" nails into 2x4's every 2-inches.

Squeegee-ers. The other members of the team were sqeegee-ers. After dipping each board, we had two people walk along each side and squeegee off the excess stain. These team members got to walk back and forth each board twice, which comes out to a bit more than 3 miles. We also sqeegee-ed off the bottom of the boards as well.

Overall, it was a good process. Mandy did a good job capturing it on video:


This was a huge effort and I couldn't have done it with out a lot of help. It was hot and sunny, and we certainly wore out our help by the end of the day. They stayed despite the heat and long day, and didn't quit until well after dark. To make matters worse, it was the first year since 1985 that the Royals had made the post-season, and the game was on that evening. Big shout out to those brave, committed souls who helped so much!

Daily Stats		Hours Worked			Cost
	Day	Trevor	Family/Friends	Contractors
Today	177	14	54	4
All Time	177	160	195	1194.5	$13,496.75
Summary of 9/30/2014		Work Done Today
		Stained siding, graded driveway
		Materials Used Today
		4100 ft of cedar bevel, 18 gallons Sikkens Cedar CDR
		Who Helped Today
		Steve, Kim, Mandy, Reed, Tom, Krista, Jennifer
		Contractors On Site
		Vanderford Construction