Siding arrives at the jobsite.

Andy unloading siding.

Our first task was to stain the siding with Penofin (a clear stain). Instead of the time-consuming process of brushing on the stain we built a trough to dip the boards in.

Andy dipping siding in trough of Penofin stain.

Wiping off extra stain from the dipped siding with a squee-jee

Andy putting freshly stained siding on drying rack

Freshly stained red cedar siding on our drying rack

First course of siding goes on!

Adam installing siding

The one weakness in the tongue and groove siding is water infiltration at the butt joint of two boards. With clapboards best practice calls for a scrap piece of tar paper or house wrap* to be installed behind the butt joint. Water that finds its way through the joint encounters a water proof surface that drains it down and out. To solve this issue Adam devised the jig pictured above whereby we would use a router to put a groove on the edge of each board that forms the butt joint. After the two boards are installed we would push in a spline. This sounds time consuming, but the jig made it a snap.                                                                                                                              *Don’t use house wrap in conjunction with cedar, the tannins in cedar ruin the house wrap.

Spartan inserting a spline in the butt joint of the siding

Spline inserted at the butt joint of two siding boards

First window trim installed. We are using stainless steel finish head screws for the task.

Veronica returns to help with siding.

The siding is stunning, especially when the sunset hits it. We have been getting compliments from everyone who walks. There are also a lot of cars that drive by very slowly with passengers craning their necks.

The blower door test setup.

The blower door test is nice, but actually finding the leaks is better. To do this we flip the fan around so that it blows air into the house. Using a fog machine to make the leaking air visible on the exterior of the house allows you to find where the leaks are. Here, Matt blows fog at a window, a common location for leaks.

It was actually fairly difficult to locate where the fog was coming out. Perhaps we needed a more powerful fog machine. I tried using a line laser to see the fog, but it didn't help at all. Later in the evening, I remembered from reading Theodore Gray's graphic book on elements, that gases do not reflect light, they only inhibit its passage. Therefore, shining a handheld laser away from where one is standing would never work. One would have to shine it at one's eyes, which, of course, is dangerous. I then asked Matt's partner Sarah, to shine a flashlight towards me. Sure enough, it did a great job illuminating the fog. If one does see a "gas" reflecting light back at you, like when you are driving through fog, technically you are seeing a vapor or mist.

Our exterior door extension jambs put the door flush with the inside of the house so the door can open all the way in. This is the opposite of our window extension jambs, where the windows sit flush with the outside. A quirky way of differentiating this concept is doors are “innie” and windows are “outtie”.

The extension jambs were attached to the aluminum clad door with Kreg screws and water proof glue. There is a second set of screws attaching a strip of wood near the outter edge because the piece of cypress that we used wasn’t wide.

In addition to extending the jambs of the door we also needed to extend the threshold. We did this using some of our granite counter top scrap. It is amazing what you can cut with a diamond blade on a circular saw. This is easily one of the loudest jobs we have done.

The stone dust is quite toxic, so we eventually worked out a way to capture most of it with Adam’s Festool shop vac.

The shop vac sucked the dust right up

We needed another large piece of granite for our third stone threshold so we made our second trip to the granite counter top manufacturer to get more scrap.

We used flex wrap tape for the stone threshold sill pan (the white area). Behind it is 1.5″ rigid foam insulation that the door will sit on. The foam will eliminate the thermal thermal break under the door. The copper flashing tape provides an impervious surface protecting the parged 2″ of foam that is on the exterior of the foundation.

We used copper for the door sill pan. The stone thresholds look really sharp.

Another detail to protect the doors from water. The saw kerf on the underside of the stone threshold is called a drip edge. Water clings to surfaces and can move horizontally along them, however it can’t move vertically (unless you consider capillary action).

Ordinarily doors and windows have flanges on them that seal them to the sheathing. Since we made our own extension jambs we also needed to make our own flange using a technique called back flashing. One uses two pieces of flashing taped together with about 1″ of overlap. The tape, which now resembles double sided tape, can now stick to both the jamb and the sheathing.

Hannah (with dinner) admiring our southern glass door. I had to put blue tape over the handle and lock set holes because bees immediately started to nest in them.

Installing a door lock

Our completed porch door entrance. This is the one that will see most of the foot traffic.

I suspect our Vernon St. door way is going to be in a home magazine some day.

Interior of Vernon St. door.

You may not be able to tell from the picture, but the stained soffit boards are slightly lighter in color than than the painted fascia boards. This was done to compensate for the fact they will always be in shadow.

Veronica helped Adam out with installing the soffit. She quickly got the hang of the sliding compound mitre saw.