West Wall 9

The heat and humidity has been a real challenge lately! Rather than spend the middle of the day outside working on the JayBee, I have been using the hottest part of the day to do paperwork (permit issues--I will write a separate post about that eventually) and stain shingles. During the cooler parts of the day, I have been able to make progress on the house.

Here is the inside trim installed on the west end bumpout.

Outer trim installed on the bumpout.

Installing the roofing drip edge on the bumpout...

Added the ice and water shield on the bumpout roof.

Finished up the housewrap on the west end.

Also see:
West Wall 1
West Wall 2
West Wall 3
West Wall 4
West Wall 5
West Wall 6
West Wall 7
West Wall 8


Another snake...

West Wall 8

The top of the west end bumpout needed some roof rafters.

Cut roof rafters started piling up.

All but the corner rafters installed.

The corner rafters are complicated. Three edges have compound-angle cuts.

Finally, I had both corner rafters installed.

Next, I added a hurricane tie to each rafter.

Then I added blocking between each of the rafters.

Roof sheathing added.

Radiant barrier added to the west end.

Housewrap done up to the level of the bumpout roof!

Also see:
West Wall 1
West Wall 2
West Wall 3
West Wall 4
West Wall 5
West Wall 6
West Wall 7
West Wall 9


Once again, my yard is full of snakes. I keep startling them. And they keep startling me!

This morning before I got out of bed, I heard these little snaps outside the window. It sounded like twigs snapping. I thought it might be a deer, so I sat up and watched. Sure enough, just a few feet from the edge of the grass, this deer's head appeared. She was a young one. It's amazing how close they can get without being seen. The foliage around here is like a jungle!

A temporary détente.

Housewrap 4

I used all the felt I had left to wrap the entryway. I ran out before I finished the sheltered part above the door. That means I will have to buy a whole roll just to do that little part--and the west end, too, of course.

I removed the cedar boards from the floor of the entryway to install the radiant barrier and housewrap--and look what I found living under there! Hundreds of ladybugs. They're gone now, but I wonder what might be the best way to keep them from returning...

Also see:
Housewrap 1
Housewrap 2
Housewrap 3

Housewrap 3

I finished installing radiant barrier and housewrap up to the peak on the east end of the JayBee. The exposed green stuff you see is ice and water shield that I used as flashing on the top edge of the bumpout.

Since I hadn't made a decision about housewrap when I began installing the trim, only the radiant barrier is installed underneath the trim. I brought the felt housewrap up to the bottom edge of the trim and then pulled the top strip of radiant barrier down over it.

Installing the radiant barrier on the north side...

It is challenging installing anything on the north side of the JayBee because of the slope of the hillside and because the hill is entirely clay. These last few days, the clay has been especially slick. The following photo doesn't adequately convey just how slippery it is back there; I felt like my feet were skating downhill on grease! Believe it or not, stepping on wet leaves is actually better than stepping on the dirt.

An additional challenge I had while installing the upper courses of housewrap on the north side was that the steep hill didn't allow me to set up stand-alone stepladders, and I couldn't lean a ladder against any part of the house I was working on. So...I set up staging instead--and then wrestled with it every time I needed to move it.

Finally. The housewrap on the north side is done--all the way up to the peak of the dormer. Not sure why the bottom course has become so dimpled; it was smooth when I installed it.

I would like to celebrate being done with housewrap entirely, but the entryway isn't done yet, and this is the west end of the JayBee...

The poor neglected west end. Floor isn't done. Bumpout isn't built. Housewrap is now waiting as well. Everything in this end is waiting on plumbing.

No more tarps are hanging as covers for windows on the other three sides. This is what the windows now look like from the inside.

I won't cut the housewrap covering the window holes until I am ready to install the windows.

Now to move onto roofing!

Also see:
Housewrap 1
Housewrap 2
Housewrap 4


Great moon last night!

Housewrap 2

The sun came out after the snowstorm was over...

...and it warmed up some, but the snow (and the dripping and melting) got in my way a bit. I was lucky not to lose power in the storm, since so many in Maine did.

The JayBee sits in front of a south facing hill, so the snow quickly melted on the JayBee and on the hillside behind it--

unlike the north facing hillsides, which held onto their snow.

The snow melting off the JayBee ran in streams off the tarp. Every time I stepped under the tarp, I got a cold trickle down my neck.

I finished all three courses of housewrap on the western end of the south wall.

Next, I covered the rest of the south wall and the whole east end with radiant barrier. After the first course of housewrap was added...

...and after the other two courses were added.

Also see:
Housewrap 1
Housewrap 3
Housewrap 4


It gets dark early these days! I was finally done cleaning up at 5:00 today, but it was too dark at that point to be working outside. Pretty moon tonight.

Housewrap 1

While waiting for the roofing order to arrive, I decided to move on with other things. I spent two whole days dubbing around with the sheathing on the north and south walls--closing gaps between the trailer and the sheathing, finishing off the sheathing on the north wall, etc.

I began the process of wrapping the house by putting on a layer of the radiant barrier on the longest stretch of the southern wall. (The gap you see in the photo below--where the upper layer of radiant barrier is not well tacked down--is where the large window is located to the west of the door.) Then I snapped a line to guide my installation of the housewrap.

Having spent probably way too much time researching the possibilities for housewrap, I ended up deciding to use asphalt felt rather than one of the newer wraps (like Tyvek or Typar). While the newer plastic wraps are supposedly easier to work with, I found a lot of testimony online from carpenters who say that, if they were going to install cedar shingles on their own home, they would use asphalt felt as the housewrap. The felt will not react with the tannins in the cedar, and apparently the felt will do a better job of handling any drops of water that may infiltrate behind it. I am using 30# felt, which exceeds building-code requirements.

Installing housewrap is a challenge when working alone. I concluded that the felt is actually easier to manage than the radiant barrier because it is stiff enough to stay rigid, rather than crumpling into an unmanageable lump. I do not hold the entire roll of either material against the house and unroll it; I do not have enough hands and strength to do all that. Instead, I unroll the material on the ground, cut the appropriate length, roll it back up, and unroll that piece against the house, stapling as I go. Here is the first layer of felt installed.

I got a little more than that done, but I ran out of daylight and ended up scrambling after dark to get everything battened down before the arrival of this weekend's storm. Snow tomorrow? Really?!

In the meantime, the roofing arrived. Doesn't look like much, does it? Thankfully, I had some help getting it up off the ground before the storm. It's a lot heavier than you might imagine.

Also see:
Housewrap 2
Housewrap 3
Housewrap 4


Below are photos of sunrise on Halloween morning.