Fascia Confusion

Before the temperature dropped too low, I knew I had to get out to stain my fascia boards, which are already on the house. Dealing with the fascia boards has not been straightforward. I didn’t even know what the word fascia meant before I started researching for the build, and there’s several different ways to install fascia and no obvious “right” way. When I pictured them, I assumed they would be the fourth edge that the roof sheathing would land on, so that’s how I installed mine. But that meant that they had to be installed back in June, before I was ready to do any staining. Tiny Nest (in B.C.) stained their fascia before putting it up, but I think they’re a bit more organized than me. 😛 Coincidentally, I ended up with the same brand of stain they used! I love following Canadian builds.

My overhang is only about 4.5″ instead of 6″ as I planned, in case I needed to add another board on top of the fascia. Some houses have a sub-fascia and then a decorative fascia on top. But I kinda forgot about all that when I was installing the drip edges and my roofing, so I can’t put a board on top of those. It’s probably better to have the house a little skinnier than the maximum, but it does mean that the rain drips off the roof onto my wheel well boxes and it’s loud.

I used butt joints for my fascia (with metal plates and nails holding them together), even though it probably would’ve been better to cut them at angles to account for expansion and contraction, like Tiny Nest did. 😛

The fascia is part of the exterior that was required for the rough building stages, but will show in the end, so I should’ve taken more care with it. There’s a twisty board end (which I’ve tried to fix, but it’s stubborn) and a gouge in another spot, but it looks good from a distance!

When I put the boards up, I figured I’d deal with staining later. Well, now it’s later, and of course it would’ve been easier to stain them before I put them up. Too late! In addition to that, they’ve also been rained on over the past several months, and have started to go a little grey. At the recommendation of the kind staff at the hardware store, I mixed up a solution of water, bleach, and TSP to clean the fascia (my parents used the same thing on our shed before staining). I spent a day up on a ladder scrubbing the fascia and thinking about how I’m a homeowner, now that I’m spending my free time on home maintenance. 😛

Starting to go grey.

Protecting the house and windows from bleach.

Scrubbed!

Rinsed and dried.

Just like new!

I decided to sand the fascia after all. The scrubbing made it a bit rough.

Left side not sanded, right side sanded.

Looking good so far!

New brush!

Look at that!

Back of the house.

I like it!

When I was picking out the stain, I was trying to find a brown and a purple that went well together, but I forgot to match the brown to the roofing. When I first started staining the fascia on the side, I was a little nervous about the colour. On the front, where there’s no white drip edge separating the colours, I think it looks great! I’ll have to take some more pictures on a sunnier day.

It took about 3 hours to scrub the fascia clean, then an hour to sand it all, and another 4 hours moving the ladder and carrying the stain bucket up and down, up and down to stain it all. It was worth it though. So far I’m happy with the stain I picked and I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with staining while I was trying to get my roof on in June. See my previous post for details about staining my siding!

Stain Splatters

After installing all the windows, it was time to pick a stain colour for my siding! Which I was avoiding, because it’s a big decision! I’m doing pine beveled siding, and the colour I choose is going to be the colour of the entire exterior of my house! I also looked at paint colours for my door, post, and exterior trim, but I’m not revealing those yet. 😉

I wanted a stain that would still show the grain of the wood. Some people don’t like how many knots pine has, but I don’t mind at all – which is convenient, because pine is one of the cheapest and lightest wood types. 😛 I like the personality in wood grain, and I’m so happy to be able to use real wood for my house instead of plastics and particle board. 🙂 There weren’t that many options for semi-transparent stains, so it didn’t take me long to choose…

I was aiming for not too red/orange and not too grey, and this seemed like the best one!

I’ve been going to a different hardware store, and the staff have been really helpful and gave me a great price on the stain. 🙂 I started staining on November 7th, in the heated garage (thanks parents!), and I’ve been staining almost every day and sometimes twice a day since! I learned that the wood fibers on the smooth side of the siding get heated while the wood is being cut, creating what’s called “mill glaze”. This closes the grain of the wood from accepting stain, so I have spent several days sanding my siding as well. It’s been a process!

I’ve really learned how to manage my time better and fit staining into my day, more than any other part of the build so far. With other tasks, I’ve usually been doing things for the first time so I never know how long it’s going to take. Then when I get the hang of it, I’m done and move on to another new thing. With the staining, it’s easy work, and I’ve already gotten plenty of practice, so I know exactly what to do and how long it’s going to take me. Instead of wondering how long it will take or having to wait until a day off, I know I need about two hours and I can get a decent amount done. That knowledge takes away the uncertainty that makes me hesitate. It’s easier to get out there and work on it, no matter my mood or the time of day, because I know exactly what I’m doing. I can blast my music, take the time to think, and go out to the garage rain or shine, day or night. It’s great!

The one thing limiting me is space. The garage is filled with stuff for renovations in my parents’ house, and I only have so much room on the sawhorses. At first, I decided I would stain 6 boards a day. I have room for five on the sawhorses, and one more on a stack of wood. And since I’d be staining every day, I didn’t want to allot too much. I have to stain the front and back in case water gets behind the siding, so that’s a lot of staining! Doing 6 boards a day and giving them 24 hours to dry before stacking them meant that it would take me 32 days to stain all of my siding. At first, I was okay with that because I had expected it to take a long time. Plus I was probably going to get someone else to install it for me later, so my work would be done when I finished the staining.

After about a week, I started doing a little more research, and any day I didn’t stain meant one more day into December I would need to stain. So I decided to start staining 12 boards a day, 6 during the day and 6 after work (I’m working 6 nights a week right now). I found more stacks in the garage to put boards on, and made room underneath the sawhorses for 3-4 boards. I also started to think about installing the siding myself. The only thing stopping me was a lack of help, and a few people offered theirs recently. I really didn’t want to spend the money and the more I thought about it, the less I wanted some stranger doing a mediocre job (or worse) on my house! I’ve done everything on it, except the welding and insulation, and I’m reluctant to let anyone else touch my house.

I’ve gotten faster at staining, and I’m usually pretty tired and/or cranky after work, so I switched to staining 12 boards during the day time. It is a bit of a musical chairs game with the boards but it’s working out so far. I’m 47% finished staining, and I hope to be done within the first few days of December. Take a look at my work so far, and remember, as always, I’ve never done this before! 😛

I knew I’d have to sand some boards to get the tape residue off from the straps around the boards. And obviously I wouldn’t be able to just sand those spots.

A fully sanded board.

The difference between sanded (top) and not sanded.

The difference between the rough (top) and smooth sides.

Personality!

Looking orange…

Looking grey…

The difference between the stained smooth (center) and rough sides.

Rough on the left, smooth on the right.

This is why I did the edges while I was doing the top, so any overlap would be on the rough backs of the boards, instead of the fronts.

I’ve gotten pretty good at the edges though!

Making room for more boards.

Stain splatter!

They’re so pretty!

First stack of six done, both sides.

One of my sanding set-ups on a nice day.

All my saw horses are in use!

There were a couple of water-damaged boards because of the way I stored them. 😦

I sanded this down and ended up staining it.

One stack done!

I didn’t sand the edge of the first half of this stack, and you can tell the mill glaze does affect how well the wood takes the stain.

Tackling another stack!

More water damage. 😦 I’ll probably cut this board and only use the dry pieces.

Stacking more finished boards in the loft. 🙂

Aaaand this is why I no longer stain at night:

Don’t kick your stain bucket. 😛

All is well, and I’m getting this done as fast as I can! It’s getting colder outside…

 

Sunshine Portals!

All my windows are now installed! After the initial learning curve, and a bit of a mess with some caulking, everything went smoothly. 🙂 Prepare for pictures! Here we go:

The bathroom and entrance windows

The living/dining room window and the kitchen window

The front window for the window seat 🙂

And of course, my octagon!

This is how I installed my windows, based on the instructions that came with them (and influenced by some online research). Different brands have different installation instructions. My windows are Peter Kohler brand.

Step 1: Cut an upside down martini glass shape in the house wrap.

Step 2: Trim the house wrap and tape the edges down (sides and bottom).

Step 3: Cut a flap in the house wrap above the window, 45° angles from the corners and high enough to fit the width of the window flashing underneath. Tape it up.

Step 4: Cut squares of flashing and add them to the bottom corners of the window.

This is how the Peter Kohler instructions showed to cut the pieces for the corners, but I have seen multiple different ways of doing this part. I only did it this way for my first window because I found it doesn’t adequately seal the corner even after you put the sill flashing on, and I didn’t like how little flashing was below the window in the end. For the rest of my windows, I did a full piece of flashing like the picture below, and then put the sill flashing on as well.

Step 5: Cut a piece 12″ longer than the sill, and apply it with 6″ up the side of the window.

You can see in this picture that I added a little rectangle of flashing to the corners, similar to what I did with any weak spots in the skylight flashing.

Step 6: Put shims on the sill and check them with a level. I ended up taping mine so they would stay, and I planned to cut the ends off later. My instructions also had specific locations for shims on the sides, 3 on the hinge side and 2 on the other side. I almost quit at this point. Even if I could lift the window by myself, how was I supposed to put it in without having someone on the inside to help guide me? Other tiny housers installed their windows as a team: one person inside and one person outside.

I took a breather, went back to the window opening, and taped the side shims in place as well. That would help me center the window as I put it in.

Step 7: First, have fasteners ready to go. The fasteners should be long enough to go an inch into the framing, so at least 1 3/4″ if you have 1/2″ sheathing because that accounts for the thickness of the vinyl. I also wanted something that had more gripping power than a smooth nail, considering all the vibration the house will go through on the road. But the hardware store only had 1 1/2″ nails with a rough finish, and 2″ smooth shank nails. So I went with a mix of the two.

Apply a bead of caulking closely around the opening, leaving gaps at the bottom.

I was way better at a continuous, even bead of caulking on the later windows. 😛 This was the first!

Steps 8/9/10?: Put the window in (some say to tilt it in, I ended up trying to carefully set the window in in a way that it didn’t disturb the shims). Hammer a nail in part way in, 4-6″ down from a top corner. Check that the window operates smoothly. Personally, I added two more nails in random places, then I checked the operation of the window again, just to be sure.

This window went in pretty smoothly, but when I did the bathroom window, I accidentally lifted the window too high, and unknowingly got caulking all over the inside of the window. When I went inside to check the operation, I saw the mess, and my parents helped me find some mineral spirits to get it off. 🙂

Also check that there’s a gap all the way around the window, that the window is centered in the rough opening. The instructions for these windows called for a 5/8″ gap. Do NOT shim above the window. There should be no load transfer onto a window. This window doesn’t have a large header because it’s only 18″ wide, but normally there would be a header made of 2x4s on their side with a piece of 1/2″ ply in between.

Step 11: Hammer the first few nails all the way in, then fill the rest of the pre-punched holes with nails.

On one of my windows, there was a gap between the sheathing and the nailing flange in one spot, even though the window was pressed tight to the house. I ended up shimming behind a couple of nails after the first nail started to pull the nailing flange away from the window.

Step 12: Apply flashing to the sides of the window, covering the nails and reaching at least a half inch past the bottom flashing and 2-3″ above the top of the window.

Maybe I should’ve taken the step-by-step pictures after I’d gotten better at placing the flashing. 😛

Step 13: Apply flashing to the top of the window, reaching one inch past the edges of the side flashing.

Always apply any flashing, tape, house wrap, etc. starting at the bottom. That way, water will run down the layers, rather than having the potential to sneak in behind an edge.

Step 14: Flip down the flap, trim it, and tape it. The instructions didn’t say to trim or tape it, they were very vague for this part, but it’s my understanding that it’s best to tape every edge of the house wrap so it preforms better. So that’s what I did.

You’re not supposed to flash the bottom of the window, so any water or condensation that gets into the sill can drain out. Notice how little flashing there is showing underneath? For the rest of the windows, I put the first piece of flashing lower just so I felt more comfortable with it.

My mum helped me lift the two bigger windows into place, and my grandpa helped me with my kitchen window! Honestly, the windows were a bit easier than expected. Yay! Enjoy some more window-installation and family pictures below:

 

It’s pretty fun to cut house wrap. I did some cutting from the inside and the outside.

These windows are the exact same size, by the way.

Side window

Front window

I still have to cut the ends of the shims off.

I ended up taking the side shims out of the entrance window, they don’t seem to serve a purpose and the gap will be filled with insulation later.

 

Goodbye important step in my “ladder” to the loft. I can’t step on this sill anymore!

Mum and I used this configuration of my fancy ladder to install the two big windows too.

Test-fitting…

More test-fitting…

And installing!

The kitchen window sill was the least level of all my windows because of a teeny mistake in my framing. So it took a lot longer to get the shims exactly right, but it’s level now! I also double-checked that the trailer was still level before installing any of the windows.

My lil kitchen window

Adapting the flashing for the octagon shape.

I ended up trimming the flashing where the window is so close to the roof.

My must-haves for rough-opening prep.

My fave window. Ah who am I kidding, I love them all!

Ya, I’m proud!

When the grandparents visit and want a tour. 🙂

Three generations.

My window opens, my window opens, my window opens 😀

I convinced my momma to climb up into the loft!

I also flashed around my front door so there’s no longer a drafty gap there:

I love my lil porch!

Phew, that was a post and a half, huh? Stay tuned, I have more things to share!