Finishing the roof and starting on the siding

The last time we worked, we were close to done, but still had some loose ends to tie up. We needed to finish the shingles, the house wrap, put in the door and start on the siding. Due to personal commitments, I couldn't find time to get back to work until 2 weeks later. By this time, I was able to order LP siding that I wanted. To save money, I bought it for 1/2 price on Craigslist. However, you get what you paid for as the siding at half price is one that didn't pass the quality control. Some pieces were spiting, some had the primer coming off. Anyway, the shop I bought it from didn't advertise it, but you could tell they're defective by the fact that they had black paint sprayed on the back. However, for a sauna, we were able to make it work.

For the roof, we pretty much only had the ridge to finish. The ridge uses special ridge shingles. They come in the same length pieces as the regular shingles, but they're perforated--and meant to be separated in to 3 pieces. They go over the ridge with the same idea in mind as the regular shingles go on the eaves. You put one down at the edge. Nail it. Use the 2nd one to cover the nails and attach it. And you do this until you reach the end in which case you put some silicone over the nail heads of the last piece and call it a day.

Silicon over exposed nail head on roof shingle.

One other thing left to do was the holes in the sheathing for the electrical boxes for the outside lights. You can go 2 ways here-- you can use the outdoor boxes that go over the siding and protrude out, or you can make it cleaner by cutting a hole in the wall and installing the junction box on the inside of the building. I've opted for both. On the front, I have internal junction boxes-- on the side where we'll hang out to cool down-- I'll use and external box. That's because I plan to put a flood light there and thought it's easier that way :)

To put in the junction boxes, I ended up buying a 4 and 1/8" Hole Dozer Hole Saw attachment that goes on the drill.

{PHOTO COMING SOON]

Then I marked the location next to a stud on both sides of the door opening and drilled the holes. I attached the round electrical box in to both opening getting it to be flush on the inside of the building with the sheathing and protruding as far as possible on the outside.

[PHOTO COMING SOON]

The next step was to cut out the template for the outside lights to be attached to. I used the 6" wide trim pieces we had for siding. I cut it to about 5" so I had two 5" x 6" pieces of trim. I then took the Hole Dozer and cut the junction box holes in both pieces. These pieces get attached to the sheathing on the outside right over the protruding junction boxes. Siding then goes around these templates.

Outdoor Light Trim Template

With these things being up all that was left was to put in the door.

Junction Boxes For Lights.

The door I bought was an entry door with lots of glass-- just like I wanted :) It was pre-hung which was great. It came with the threshold and trim. One unfortunate thing is I wanted an entry door that opens to the outside to save space. However, I think for safety reasons-- all entry doors open to the inside of the dwellings :(

Before putting in the door, I re-measured the opening to make sure it fit. Then, we used the same rubber membrane that we put on the bottom of the window openings. We laid this membrane on bottom under the door and about 6" up the rough opening. With the membrane in, I put a bead of regular silicone around the door as well as under the threshold and put in the whole pre-hung door in the rough opening. I then used a level and some shims to make sure the door was square. I checked closing and opening the door a few times to make sure it worked well. Once I was sure, we used a pneumatic brad nailer and nailed the door assembly through the trim that it came with in to the rough opening of the door. Then, I took out 1 screw from each of the 3 door hinges and replaced it with a long screw that would penetrate the door frame and go in to the 2x4s of the rough opening. That’s the standard way to install a door and made it secure. With that—we had a functional door. Next I needed some locks and could start keeping tools in the sauna instead of the garage.

A friend of mine that was helping out does siding for a living. He was guiding the hanging process with another buddy who would cut the LP siding boards to the right sizes. I was busy working on other things-- so I can't tell you much about the dos and don'ts of siding. However, from what I’ve seen, first you start with the trim. Trim on the corners (L-shape) and around windows. Then, you start at the bottom, pick a starting point. Take a piece of siding and cut it to size of the wall. Make sure it’s level and nail it on. The next piece laps over it going up with about a 1” lap. One thing I noticed, he had a special tool that he used that set the right overlap. Not sure what it’s called. When putting up the siding, leave a ¼” gap between the siding pieces on the side and the trim pieces on the sides. You then fill that gap in with the special siding silicone sold at the big box stores. The rest is just cutting the pieces to fit.

The siding took us a couple of weekends to finally finish, but once it was done—we had a real building! :)

The siding is up and the door is in.

Roofing, Underlayment, Shingles, Soffits, House Wrap and Windows...

I am starting to see how this works. If I don’t make 3 trips to the improvement store, the day is not over. Also, Pizza every Saturday is now getting predictable J

The plan for this weekend was grand. We wanted to:

-finish the soffits and fascia

-put down the ice and water membrane/underlayment

-put down shingles

-put up the Tyvek

-put in windows

The buddy who does siding for a living took up the fascia/soffits. One thing I learned is that the long sheets of soffit material do not go on the overhang as is. Instead, they get cut down to little rectangles that get put up from overhang to the building. So plan on that when buying material.

Drip edge over fascia with soffit below.

2x6 Fascia that will get covered up with aluminum and soffit below.

Return box being fabricated.

The day started with me putting up the drip edge on the eaves. Note: the drip edge gets put on first on the eaves, with Ice and Water membrane going on top of the drip edge. However, for the gables, the drip edge gets put on top of the Ice and Water. Ice and Water, by the way, is the name of the rubbery underlayment that is used on eaves and gables. Read further to find out more J.

The roll of the Ice and Water is pretty heavy to work with. So I measured the length of the roof, added some wiggle room and cut off a piece of the membrane on the ground. Then, rolled it up and took it up on the roof. Each piece has 2 white plastic sheets on the bottom side, and one small plastic strip on the opposite side. We’ll call that the top. We lined up the underlayment with the drip edge and left some slack on the gables to be cut off later. We rolled out the underlayment with the small strip of plastic facing up toward the sky and towards the roof peak. Once we had everything where we wanted, we took the top large sheet of plastic from the bottom of the underlayment and pulled it off to expose the glue. The underlayment was now glued from the top half. We then took the remaining bottom plastic piece off of the underlayment and now the whole thing was secured to the roof. We then went and put a few T50 staples through the little plastic strip that was facing up. The instructions don’t really say what that piece is and initially we thought we had to take off that plastic from the strip to expose the glue. As we found later, there was no need—the plastic stays on.

Also, I had read somewhere that the Ice and Water underlayment needs to cover at least 1 foot of the heated space. It needs to be put down on the eaves as well as the gables. With those 2 rules, I’d have most of the roof covered in the Ice and Water anyway, so I decided to ditch the cheaper felt paper and do the whole roof in Ice and Water. They also say it’s better that way—though more expansive. I ended up needing 3 rolls at $45 each.

Our next strip, we did the same thing. Cut the length of the roof with some extra on the ground, got it up on the roof, lined up the new piece to the bottom of the small plastic strip sticking up on the previous sheet, peeled the plastic from the bottom, glued the sheet and put staples through the upper strip.

We continued to lay 3 strips on each side of the roof while leaving the ridge of the roof to be done last. Once both sides were complete, we again cut a whole length sheet and put it over the ridge making sure it equally overhung on both sides of the roof. The sheet was again glued by peeling the backing and stapled.

After the underlayment was complete, we added the Drip Edge over it on the gable sides.

Drip edge over the Ice and Water underlayment on the gables.

Next we were ready for shingles, but first, we had to put down the starter strips on both eaves. The starter strip looks just like the Ice and Water, with one difference that it has blots of black glue on one edge. That glue needs to point up to the sky and be towards the eave’s end. When shingles are placed on top of it, the heat causes the first row of shingles to fuse to the black glue and holds them from coming up in the rain/wind.

The shingles starter roll with the glue blots before the shingles go up.

                         

When I went to the store to buy shingles, there were 2 different types I needed. One package of the Ridge shingles—those that go over the ridge. And, 11 boxes of the regular shingles. On a side note, it’s amazing how now every trip to the store is at least $300.

So the rule with shingles is pretty simple. First row needs to hang over the drip edge around ¼ inch. Once the first row is laid, if you look at the shingle, there’s 2 chalk lines on each piece. The top one, you use to put 6 roofing nails through equally spaced. The bottom line is what you use to line up the next row of shingles by. Finally, because once again, all the butt joins need to be staggered, the following rule is used. For the first row, you start with a full shingle piece. 2^nd row, you cut a ¼ off the first shingle and start the row that way. You then use that ¼ piece on the end. Next row, you’re down another fourth, so at this point, you start with ½ of a shingle piece. Next row ¼ piece, the following row, a full piece once again. If you do that, you’ll notice that each subsequent row covers the butt join of the previous row very nicely.

First row of shingles over starter roll.

In the midst of one of my trips to the store, the guys put up the house wrap for me. I basically bought a 9’ roll. And, since I have about 7’ walls, things worked out perfectly. The wrap was lined up to the eves and rolled around. We saved a few dollars by using regular staples to hold it in place instead of the specialized plastic-top nails. We’ll just be extra careful not to rip it. Otherwise, there are marking on the wrap for where the nails should go, so we put staples through those markings and called it good.

Small red dots on the paper is where the staples/nails go.

The fun thing with building this sauna is that I have all sorts of help available from my friends. So while 2 people were doing shingles on the roof, me and another guy took on putting in the windows.

For the windows, the following things needed to be done. The house wrap was cut such that the “wings” were folded inside the window rough opening on the sides and bottom. (They suggest a reverse-Y cut to be made) They were stapled from inside the building over the window opening. A special window membrane/underlayment was placed on the bottom sill and half way up the sides of the window rough opening as well as the outside wall. This protects the wood from standing water.

Window underlayment glued then cut in to shape.

A bead of caulk was put around the outside of the window opening and the window itself was put in. Once it was shimmed from inside on the bottom and leveled, 2 nails were put in to each of the 2 top corners. The window was then shimmed and leveled on the sides, and the bottom corners received 2 nails as well. At this point, the window was secured from being out of square, and the rest of the nails were put in. Once it was all nailed up, a special aluminum tape was put over the nails on both sides of the window first, and the last strip was put over the top making sure that it extended past the side tape on both sides. And with that—both the windows were done.

Caulk the window opening for better seal.

Ready for the window to be put in.

And it's official!

Once again, it was a full day of work that started at 10a and we got a lot done. However, we ran out of daylight and so, we still need to finish the shingles, the fascia on the back of the building and get started on the siding, but as the temperature outside gets cooler, we’re moving right on schedule to getting the exterior done so that we can start on the inside.

More info can be found from the following links off of my resources page:

Installing Ice and Water membrane, Felt and Drip Edge:
http://www.finehomebuilding.com/how-to/video/replacing-roof-series-apply-drip-edge.aspx

How to shingle a roof:
http://www.oneprojectcloser.com/how-to-shingle-a-roof/

How to shingle a roof (more):
http://www.building-a-home-info.com/architectural-shingles.html