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Tolkien never wrote about repairing the keeps
Replacing rotten boards on the garage turned into an epic. What I thought might take a day or two turned into six days of doing not much else. In the end I got six of the eight boards replaced which I intended to replace. The other two, the left side of the left bay, have to wait until a long weekend. I'll be able to replace them fairly quickly, it'll just take a while to replace all the siding which goes along with them. Fortunately, I have all the siding primed, so a good bit of the time consuming work is done. I still have to finish the last of the trim on the right bay and do the painting. But we have replaced a lot of wood and all the siding up to about seven feet on the middle and right side. Honestly, most of the siding on the garage and the rest of the house is toast. We need to replace it all. I'm going to try to only think about that one section at a time.
Two good bits out of this project:
The contraption I made last fall for drying siding worked out just perfect. I had built the ends (picture combs with teeth on both sides about 6 ft tall) and set aside the ends and cross pieces so it wouldn't take up room until needed. Then last week I just screwed the cross pieces in place, creating something 6ft tall by 5ft long, by 2ft wide, and started loading it with siding. We put the unprimed boards in the teeth on one side, take them off one at a time and prime the front/ends/sides then replace them in their slot. Once they are dry on that side, we move them to the other side of the rack, then repeat the process for priming the back. Working that way, one person can be busy for hours or two people can work at once (one from one side, one from the other). The legs on the bottom will hold a bundle of siding waiting to be done on one side and we can probably stack another bundle or two of completed on the other side of the legs.
Because there was no way to buy a match for one of the pieces of trim at any of the local stores, I also tried my router set up for the first time. I was able to buy the regular (cheap) dimensional lumber and shape it to more or less match the existing pieces. My boards weren't perfect, but I had less router marks in mine than whoever created the old ones.
Not much else got finished during the week off, but that's what happens when you open a big can of worms. I did get the dying lilac cut down and transported to the brush pile. I also managed to bring down a maple limb which was dangling but still partially attached 25 feet off the ground. I always consider it a victory when I get one of those widowmakers down without making any widows.
Two good bits out of this project:
The contraption I made last fall for drying siding worked out just perfect. I had built the ends (picture combs with teeth on both sides about 6 ft tall) and set aside the ends and cross pieces so it wouldn't take up room until needed. Then last week I just screwed the cross pieces in place, creating something 6ft tall by 5ft long, by 2ft wide, and started loading it with siding. We put the unprimed boards in the teeth on one side, take them off one at a time and prime the front/ends/sides then replace them in their slot. Once they are dry on that side, we move them to the other side of the rack, then repeat the process for priming the back. Working that way, one person can be busy for hours or two people can work at once (one from one side, one from the other). The legs on the bottom will hold a bundle of siding waiting to be done on one side and we can probably stack another bundle or two of completed on the other side of the legs.
Because there was no way to buy a match for one of the pieces of trim at any of the local stores, I also tried my router set up for the first time. I was able to buy the regular (cheap) dimensional lumber and shape it to more or less match the existing pieces. My boards weren't perfect, but I had less router marks in mine than whoever created the old ones.
Not much else got finished during the week off, but that's what happens when you open a big can of worms. I did get the dying lilac cut down and transported to the brush pile. I also managed to bring down a maple limb which was dangling but still partially attached 25 feet off the ground. I always consider it a victory when I get one of those widowmakers down without making any widows.