Bill's Swamp bridge

My dad took some time off from my house and built a bridge over a small water course in his back yard. It's going to be a whole lot easier to get a wheel barrow to and from the wood pile! The following are some pictures he sent over.

SIDING THE FRONT

The awning over the front window will provide shade during summer afternoons. We have placed it 'around' the top of the window (rather than simply 'on top' of the window) to have more window coverage and allow us to leave the upper windows open during rain storms. We still have a few modifications to perform but this is close. We have also planted a small Japanese Pine in the NW corner and a butterfly bush near the steps. Lately we have seen some butterfly bushes in the area that are huge so this will probably have to move.

I also placed the metal cap on the West vent box. All I need to do on this one is install the vent pipe. When we side the rear of the house I will cap off the East vent box.


We finished installing the cement siding and began painting it. We also began plastering over the cement board on the the eaves and soffits. We used a Portland cement mixture with white pigment and fiberglass strands for this. I will never make a living as a plaster worker but I am doing ok so far. Pam is doing most of the painting and it is coming along great. We are using 2 shades of green on the exterior; one (lighter) for the siding and one (darker) for the window trim. The plaster will remain white for now.

Siding

We started the siding this weekend. Glen and the gang came back to help us and pointed out a few things I messed up while they were gone. I spent all Saturday evening tearing out and adjusting 2 of our little square windows because they were not working with the siding alignment. Glen had and interesting point; he said that with siding you should be more concerned with the appearance of straight lines than straight lines themselves, especially when with working with an old house. As you can see this window was not where it should have been and had to be moved.

I know it bugged the guys to have to install second hand cement siding. The boards were dirty and many of them had been chipped. I had to keep telling them that it was going to look great when we were done. With a little soapy water and some elbow grease these boards will be ready to paint in no time.

We have decided on the Green Guard DC-14 product for our rain screen. After looking at several products that seemed appropriate we went with this one for two reasons: 1 - it was highly recommended by a builder in this area and 2 -I thought it would go up faster than a batten system. I've been hearing stories of horizontal lap siding not holding up as long as expected and paint that should have lasted for 10 years only lasting 2 or 3. Most of the finger pointing has been directed to poorly ventilated walls. The same way a shingle deteriorates faster on an unvented roof, paint can be "baked off" siding that is not able to breath.

This product actually has drain/vent channels on both sides of the panel to promote air flow.

Soffits

If you decide to put your soffit vents in like this, make sure you place a 1/8" wide by 1/4" deep channel (typical saw blade set at 1/4" depth) along the inside face of the facia board. The lip of the aluminum vent slides into this groove and supports its outside edge. The inside edge gets face nailed and covered with cement board. Also, we ran the soffit vent continuous because the bottom half is partially blocked by the 2x4 sub fascia.

Little Ductlings

We have two exhaust ducts coming out of the soffit on the north side of the house. One is for the bathroom and one for the kitchen. For our renovation I have designed the eaves to be thin (3.5") and didn't think about how to make a 3" duct turn 90 degrees in a 3.5" cavity. I spent a good deal of time looking on the web for soffit vents that would work and found nothing. I also spent a lot of time in the hardware store trying to put something together from off the shelf pieces. I ended up taking standard galvanized steel duct and fabricating these two 90 degree elbows. With my snips, a rivet gun and some foil metal duct tape I came up with these two. When I was done (and it took a while to make these) I thought to myself that someone who knows a lot more than me must have done this before. A product must be out there because not everyone wants to see those exhaust hoods on the side of there house.

BEES

Lots of bees!

When I heard that we had bees in the back yard I was not expecting this. Several thousand honey bees had gathered on a branch in our pear tree. Massed together they were the size of two basketballs. At first we thought there was a hive but it turned out to be all bees. We called our neighbors Walter and Rachael because we had seen them working with bees before. They came over to have a look and decided that one of their queen bees had returned. They set to work right away gathering the bees and relocating them to their bee boxes.

Walter would place a box on top of the ladder and brush the bees into it. He was trying to catch the queen bee. If the queen bee went into the box, the others would follow. The bees were full with honey so they were not aggressive. It was daytime and many of the bees were still out gathering pollen. That night we returned to have a look and another large group was back in the tree. They seemed pretty quiet after a hard day of pollen gathering. According to Rachael and Walter, these bees would soon find their way to the bee boxes where the queen was.

We ended up learning a lot about bees and their place in our food chain. They play a huge role in the distribution of pollen and as Walter put it, "Everything you eat that comes from the ground depends on pollination in some way."

Above is a typical apiary where these bees will be kept. Below is a photo of a typical honeycomb you might find inside the boxes.