I don't brag on here often, do I? Well, this time we are particularly proud of our hard work (ever though it doesn't look like much). I'm not very familiar with American house-building methods, but the idea seemed to be that boards were nailed over insulation, and then batons nailed over the seams to create a decently weatherproof outer wall. The boards was already been put up and whitewashed, so it was up to us to get some baton-work completed.
I sized up the job at hand, and quickly decided we would need a chop-saw and a nail gun. We had a dodgy hammer (I was convinced the head would come off at any moment, probably as it was bring swung back towards the face), so cheese nails and Skil saw. At least it was something. I was pleased to see that if I should accidentally snag the cord of the saw, I wouldn't be the first.
We began by working out some trim around the window. Peter explained that it would be nice the mimic the trim on the original house, with the horizontals extending 3/4" beyond the uprights. Since we we working with 1x3, our efforts were never going to be elegant, but we were instructed to to whatever we thought best. Once the window was framed we began on the batons under the window. We thought it would be plain sailing, but the boards underneath we not even, and all the batons were warped or bent, and would bounce as you tried to nail, effectively dissipating all the energy you were throwing at the nail! We persevered and achieved what we could before the threat of heat-stroke forced us to go in search of beer.
On the second day we shored up some of our previous work with additional nailing, and worked out some trick angled pieces under the eaves. I'm not going to say it was pretty, but (most of) the them fit snugly, and close to vertical. As for the others...I believe they call it caulk over here...
We may have only got a small corner done, but y'know, there was eating and drinking and catching up to do too! Photos of all are on Flickr
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