Will I Measure Up?

The weather has been springlike, which means rain followed by glorious moments of sunshine, followed by rain, accompanied by explosive of growth by anything with chlorophyll.

For the most part, the rain isn't particularly cold, and is only occasionally windy, so depending on the project, work can continue.

On a particularly windy and rainy day, Ed started making the eave brackets. These are cedar, stained not painted, and there are 14 of them for the garage. They are going to look awesome!

While Ed was gone last week I painted the green trim around the garage doors and the lower windows. That way, we can start shingling. Ed made a board ledge thingie (I'm sure there is a name for it) that keeps the line of shingles straight and exactly 7" from the row below. That's assuming of course, that you put the ledge board on correctly. Then you can line the shingles up the way you want them, and go back and shoot the whole row in. Then, every three rows or so, check all your measurements, level and plumb, and continue. Simple, yes? You're talking to the woman who measures a yard of cloth by holding it from one shoulder to opposite fingertip. It is now my life's work to shingle while Ed is back at work.
"Just measure," he says, "You'll be fine."
I sighed heavily.

I want to do it right, and I want it to look good. But the whole process is a little scary to me, being out of the realm of prior experience. Guess I'll just jump in, and if I mess it up, nobody dies. I'll just take it out and fix it.


We know that the best practice is to hand nail all these shingles on, but.. really.. If I were Bill Gates, I'd hire a crew of 15 or so to do that, but it's just Ed, who is gone half the week, and me, who hasn't a clue what I'm doing, so we're gonna shoot em in. We're using a Senco SCN49 nailgun with 2" 6D hotdipped galvanized nails. We have 80 psi on the compressor and the nails go in like a hot knife through butter.
We were interrupted by Abby's sudden discovery of a porcupine. It was her first, and hopefully last encounter. Six quills to the nose was a painful lesson to mind her own business.

By yesterday afternoon, we had a few rows of shingles up and it's looking good! This morning Ed went back to work and I'm on my own. The sun is supposed to come back out this afternoon and be nice all week so the pressure is on.