cladding #2
Cladding on the west continues…
The last month has finally given us enough dry days to make progress with the cladding on the west elevation! Come on sun!
On this wall we have been working roughly from top to bottom as we have too many openings to start at the base and properly establish the line of the diagonal. This makes it a little slower as each board has to be held up against the last before nailing, rather than sitting it down on top of the previous board, however it does mean that going forward on to the other elevations we can start as close to the base of the wall as possible as we will have the corners established to keep us right.
We have been off-setting the joins along the lengths of each board to create a more homogeneous appearance when viewed from a distance.... You can see this in more detail in the next two photos and the first photo of this post.
The next few photos focus on a typical window reveal as it progresses. The edge of the main elevation is established with a board on packers made from cladding off-cuts screwed temporarily into the cladding battens (with short enough screws to make sure the membrane isn't continuously pierced behind as we move these about!)...
A compound mitre is cut on the end of each board as it overhangs the window reveal... Then the reveal is wrapped in black insect mesh and clad in the opposite direction to the main elevation with a small gap left for expansion at the mitred corner. This creates a ‘soft’ joint which allows movement on each facade.
The same window reveal but from the inside of the master bedroom...
As we came along the elevation we reached the corner window header...
At the 'internal' corner the first board above the head of the window is simply cut to meet the horizontal and the next piece of cladding to the side is cut to meet the vertical plane. Not all of the window corners worked out as neatly as this and that is where the 'shark' shaped cuts mentioned in the previous post are needed!
Things get a little more tricky at the 'external' corner as the cladding reaches a point where it can no longer span between the vertical cladding battens, and some small reduced depth battens are needed to take the corner. (In other places we had to combine cut-down battens with some stainless steel straps - more on that detail later!)
Firstly two horizontal battens are pre-fixed to each other and offered up to the adjacent vertical battens on each elevation. These are trimmed to leave sufficient space for drainage between them and the Gutex as they run horizontally (although that is a little hard to see in these photos due to the black membrane and angle of the shots!). We also cut the top surface on a bevel towards the building to shed water back to the cavity behind. In this photo you can also see the pink string line and temporary piece of cladding used on the adjacent elevation to establish the corner...
A vertical piece is added and some of the ends of the cladding boards are fixed through from the rear - always using stainless steel fixings to the larch as it is a 'reactive' timber and using galvanised fixings would cause unsightly black staining. The whole assembly is also wrapped in the black insect mesh to 'close' the cavity to bugs...
We then worked our way down and across to the corner...
The very last small triangle will be pre-fixed to the matching piece on the adjacent elevation, as well as the piece on the soffit and offered up at the end...
