Date: October 27 - December 9, 2025
In the blog post covering last June (Garage and Root Cellar ICF Assembly) I talked about vendor news but I forgot to mention my good fortune in locating a source for the siding wood. Charla and I had decided to use the same horizontal raw wood boards style on the shop as the siding we used on the house. In the house construction blog (at the end of this GrapevineHouse post) I described Dan Quinn, our source of Eastern Hemlock siding. I knew that Dan had passed away (he was in his late 70's back then but still going strong), so last spring I called around to all the sawmills in the area. None of them milled Hemlock. In mid June I took a drive to check if the site of a closed mill on the other side of Mars Hill was showing any signs of life. Nothing there but while I was out I thought maybe I ought to drive out to Dan's place in Spruce Pine (45 miles east of here) to see if anyone was around. To my delight I saw some freshly milled Hemlock, logs and a portable saw mill in the old mill yard, but nobody there. I thought I'd hang around a bit and leave a note with my number. After a short while up comes Tom Glenn in a pickup truck. He was Dan's right-hand man for our original siding and had helped deliver that load to our house, so he remembered who I was. He said that he'd be able to provide the siding as well as the rooster tails and fascia for the roof. I asked for the roof materials ASAP and told him early September was the projected time for siding.
But who was going to do the siding? Stacy McCurry had told me the siding price was $10,000 and the eaves and fascia they had done for the roof system was a third of that work, which is why I owed him another $3000 above our agreed price. I knew that taking that price was going to be nothing but trouble because it takes a lot more time than that for the siding job I wanted. When Stacy came out to take care of the odds and ends in late September we discussed what exactly would be involved in the siding and the deck and he came back with a price of $23,000 which was more in the ballpark. However I didn't jump on that bid because the amount of rework I was doing on their job had pretty much broken then shattered my faith in the quality of their work. And siding is finish work which needs to be done precisely. Talking with electrician Eric H about it, he recommended a former colleague Brandon Riddle who does carpentry work. Brandon came out, expressed interest in the job but said there were too many variables for him to give me a bid. Would I be willing to pay on an hourly basis? ($60 per hour per head -- pricey!). On the strength of Eric's recommendation and the straightforwardness I sensed from Brandon I agreed to that price. Brandon had about four weeks of work lined up before he could get to our job.
Anyhow, also in late September Tom texted to say he had about half my order done. The delay wasn't really a problem, so I encouraged him to keep at it so that I'd have the full amount by the time the siding crew was ready to get to work. I requested that he deliver it but Tom had given away his old truck, it wasn't running very well, and he wasn't sure he would be able to borrow it. In a nice way he basically said that I should figure out how to get 12,000 pounds of wood from Spruce Pine to my house. In a nice way I asked him to check around with his contacts because I didn't have a clue.
Some time passed before I spoke to Ryan Wooten, excavator extraordinaire, to ask for a bid for retaining walls. So I asked him if he could haul that wood or if he knew anyone who had a truck. All he has is a dump truck and that wouldn't be convenient, but he recommend I inquire at the Mars Hill Hardware (& lumber) since they've got a real lumber truck (with tilt bed!) and might be willing, for a price of course. That's the local store that the Willis family runs - who I was trying to line up to do this building project in the first place.
The lumber was about ready for pickup so I dropped by the hardware and asked if they'd do that kind of thing. The lady said she would ask Jimmy who wasn't around just then, so she collected the details of what I needed and said they'd call me on Monday.
Meanwhile Jerry M, aka Curly, cement pumper and finisher extraordinaire, came by to find out what stucco work I needed so I asked him if he knew anyone. "My son-in-law has a truck" he said. "I'll ask him if he could do that, but he's out of state right now. He'll be back in a couple days. Call me."
Tom texted that the siding lumber was about done and I could pick it up anytime. Never a peep from Jimmy at Mars Hill Hardware. Before I called Curly back I checked the weather forecast and saw that a storm was expected to roll in Sunday night and rain until Tuesday. That would make Curly available since they can't do cement work in the rain. Checking with Tom whether Monday would work, he said as long as it wasn't "really coming down" it'd be OK, but if it was raining hard that field where the lumber was stacked would be too wet and he wouldn't drive his tractor on it because "it'll make such a mess that I won't be able to get back into it before Spring."
So I confirmed with Curly that we'd do it on Monday as early as possible, and that we'd rendezvous at the McDonald's in Burnsville at 8:30AM. At this point he tells me there is no son-in-law truck available, but he has a trailer and he'll bring that. I have a trailer too, and I hadn't even considered trying to bring that much wood on a trailer, but I needed to make sure I had siding on site when the crew got there, so I decided to go with the flow and just take what we could.
I was worried about the McDonald's meet-up because it was on the left side of the four lane divided highway and I was imagining the difficulty of maneuvering a truck and trailer in the fast-food parking lot. Sitting in the parking lot facing the main road I catch sight of Curly in my rear view mirror, already in the lot. He wasn't driving the big Ford 350 he uses for cement work - just a regular (albeit beefy) pickup truck. He proceeds to get into the drive-through so he can get himself a biscuit and feed the two helpers he had brought along. That guy is one hell of a driver.
I led them out (and out and out) to Tom's place and although it's raining, it's not too soggy yet. The tractor has forks so he can lift a bundle (which were just stacked, not strapped). Curly's trailer is the one he uses to haul his BobCat front end loader (i.e. a lot stouter than my trailer), and he thinks it will be able to carry the whole order of seven bundles. Tom and I both were skeptical about the wisdom of that, but we kept loading them until we had five on board. Then Curly eyed the load and asked Tom how much he thought that weighed. We decided it was enough for one load and that my Tundra and trailer could handled the remaining two bundles on a follow-up run.
He was definitely fully loaded but the equipment came through, and the two helpers were great to unload and stack the wood inside the garage. Curly charged me $500 - $250 for him and $125 for each for the helpers.
I drove back over to Spruce Pine with my trailer on Thursday Oct 30 and got the remainder. All the wood was 16 feet long, so when Tom slid it into my trailer the weight was about centered on the trailer axles. THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO LOAD A TRAILER! I moved some top boards toward the tongue in order to put more weight on the tongue (you want a significant portion of the weight to be on the tongue so the trailer will track correctly). I tried to get a little momentum to get out of the lumber yard field but there wasn't enough traction (and my Tundra isn't four wheel drive). Luckily Tom was right there with his tractor and the trailer is a hunk of junk, so he was readily granted permission to use his forks to shove me from the back. That got me on to the pavement and on my way.
When I got to the main highway I quickly found that 55MPH felt very unstable as the trailer was weaving back and forth and man that wood gave it's opinion some heft. So I kept it below 50 and just hoped the line of cars behind me wouldn't get too long before I got to the 4 lane road. I planned to stop at Summit Lumber on my way by, so everything I bought there went on the very front of the trailer to improve its balance. The final leg home was a little less white-knuckly. However I wasn't surprised when I hit the first steep spot on the gravel driveway and the wheels lost traction. The second run at it didn't even get me as far as the first, so I (skillfully, if I do say so) backed down the curvy driveway, unhitched the trailer next to the road and drove up to fetch the Kubota. That thing works great as a tug, especially with some rocks for ballast in the front bucket:
Brandon was delayed for a few days so that gave me the time I needed to finish the window and door jambs for the openings that I didn't buy new. My original plan was to simply have wood jambs built from whatever stock I could find in the barn that was wide enough for the 2x6 exterior walls. The only thing on hand that wide was Douglas Fir carried from Vashon when we moved. I got the jamb built for the used window from the house (described in an earlier post) which has a dark bronze exterior aluminum cladding. It struck me that I should check through my leftover roofing flashing to see if I could clad the exterior of the jamb. This would make that window match all the store-bought ones. Hallelujah!, there were angled pieces of metal that would work great.
First I had to tear out the rough opening and header that Austin had built. I replaced his header with the thinnest one I could justify so the window would be higher on the wall.
After the window was installed,
it's color scheme is indistinguishable from the Marvin windows around it.
Next I made jambs for the shop half-doors. I had run out of leftover roofing flashing so I ordered a couple of pieces from the roofing metal place. It cost $25.00 for a 10 foot piece - unexpectedly pricey but high quality sheet metal. I'll make the half doors themselves when I get the shop up and running, in the meantime I put in a plywood plug.
As you can see in this wider take I've also routed the 6" geothermal pipes through the wall so that we know how to cut out the siding when the time comes.
Meanwhile it's November 10 and winter weather delays the start of the siding install. November 13, my 68th, we start to see some action:
The vertical strips are half-inch plywood that hold the siding out from the wall to allow airflow. The black strip along the bottom is "cor-a-vent", a recycled plastic product that provides a insect (and animal) proof way for air to flow into that space. When we built the house they didn't use these restrictive vents. We've learned the space behind the siding is ideal for bees, mice and bats. I'm trying hard to make sure this time there are no gaps that can be leveraged for habitat. The picture above was about all that got done in the first day.
Early in the afternoon Brandon pointed out that we'd need flashing for above the windows pretty soon - next day at the latest. He recommend that I talk to Mars Hill Hardware since "they've got a sheet metal brake upstairs and can bend metal". They also sold dark brown aluminum flashing to cut and bend as required. I was able to help out the old timer on the brake, which he welcomed since having another set of hands on a ten foot strip of aluminum makes the job easier.
It was a really good deal too as they only charged for the metal, not the bending. This time the 10' pieces were less than $10 each.
Next day the flashing and siding boards started going up.
That's a day's work - progress I was pretty happy with. Next day move up the scaffold and continue:
The utilities penetrating the siding get cased with two-by hemlock blocks.
Work up high goes slower so it took another full day to complete the wall:
The solar guys were expected the next day, so I asked the siding crew to work on the East side next (left in the above view). I'll document the interleaved solar work in my next post. Brandon needed to take a couple days off so he recruited his dad Clinton to sub for him along with a young helper to move the boards. Here's the east side after two days:
They installed a 2x10 treated ledger board for the deck - the green board above the scaffold in the view above. It would be a month before I noticed that this board was 2 feet short of what my design indicated. It's very frustrating to not notice something like that when it would be easier to fix!
The east side was completed about the time the solar guys were through with their trench and connection, so the crew started on the west side.
They got up to the windows before breaking for Thanksgiving:
During this time I had the garage door salesman come look at our situation. I had a hard time understanding how the doors were mounted into the openings, that is, how the opening is finished so that the door closes it. I had put the truck into the garage a couple times and discovered that having an eight foot opening is really very tight - you need to be going straight in. This was an error where I measured the truck, saw that it would fit through an 8' opening, but didn't experience how uncomfortably tight that was when you drove it. The rough opening created by pillars between the doors left about 1" on each side for finish siding before they impinged on the 8' width. I'd probably have to fold in the truck mirrors in order to put it in the garage. As I pondered the problem it occurred to me that I could replace the outermost 2x8 on the pillar with a hemlock two-by so end up with a finished width of 8'2", which would at least allow me to avoid the mirror-folding exercise.
Here is the starting state of the pillars and beam across the top. That's all inset from the plane of the outer wall. The sheathing and Tyvek weren't good because when they were put in I didn't understand exactly that the siding would be flush with the wall above. And the fact that there isn't a straight or plumb line in any of the garage door supports.
I cut off the Tyvek, pulled off the sheathing then cut out the outermost of the four 2x8's on each side and trimmed the treated lumber plate underneath. Then I fashioned/carved a locust bottom board to wrap around the concrete:
I then planed down 2x6 hemlock planks for the uprights. PS, do ya think I need a better shop space?
I was careful to shim them so the both planes were vertical. I used plum lines to ensure they were in line with the outer wall above.
The siding crew didn't make it out the Monday after Thanksgiving, then Tuesday was crummy weather so it was Wednesday before they started again. Which was just as well because this custom woodcraft was taking longer than I expected. I got the beams sheathed using lots of shims so the result was straight and vertical
but I was having a hard time deciding how to pad out the horizontal beam above. As I tried to measure the existing sheathing I noticed just how badly it had been applied. On spot bulged out almost an inch, but had been papered over by the Tyvek:
After I cut that piece out
I decided to wait for the morrow when Brandon could take a look and advise how to sheath the beam. He said just pull a string between the treated uprights at either end of the beam and sheath flush with that, even though it wouldn't line up perfectly with the sheathing above it. The siding would even that out if they were careful not to pull it in real tight with the screws.
About this time Clinton recommended that I take stock of the remaining lumber and make sure we'd have enough to finish the front. I calculated needing 84 boards if every board was fully usable, which it never is. We had 108 boards on hand, so it looked close but doable. Especially since Clinton is a master at minimizing wastage. Nevertheless I called Tom and asked if he could mill some more for me. He said he had enough logs for another 350-400 linear feet. I said I'd take it, and asked him to mill some wider stock that I could use for repairs on the house when that is needed. I ended up using all the extra we had after the house was built, so experience dictated that I should get it while the getting is good!
They spent Wednesday finishing the west side with the tricky angles under the roof, and I got variable shims on top of the beam on 19.2" centers (lining up with truss placement) so the sheathing would sit flat. However I only had time to put in one 8' piece of sheathing that day. The next morning I hurried back from Rotary since that needed to be finished before they could move to the front wall, but Brandon and his Dad had arrived early thinking the same thing and were just wrapping up the sheathing and reapplying Tyvek. Pros working together - at least five times faster than me working alone.
End of Thursday they'd started on the front, with nice trim work around the garage doors.
They made an aesthetic choice to run the trim to ground level - I was thinking it would stop at the bottom of the siding board. "We can always cut that off with the oscillator if we don't like it" Brandon said.
Another day got us to the windows
Brandon and Ramon working up high, they brought another guy to help out Clinton working the chop saw and passing up the boards.
Finishing the last courses:
after which we're done with the planks:
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