cladding #6

North elevation cladding continues and the west gets a haircut!

During the previous month we have made some further progress on the North elevation cladding and given the West elevation a haircut!

On the West elevation we left the cladding long at the top edge until we had set up the heights at the two corners. This meant that later (when we wanted to join the next elevation in the sequence) we needed to trim this elevation to suit!

We did this with a Japanese hand saw (which cuts in the opposite direction to a western hand saw so is quite handy for this type of cut) cutting each board on a backwards bevel to shed the water away from the external face of the wall. We are planning to have a very minimal flashing to the top of the wall that doesn't wrap down over the front so we are finishing with a thin stainless steel flashing - more on this later!

The corner mitre has turned out well, although it has taught us quite a few lessons as we have gone along! The principle one being that the timber moves a reasonable amount over time as it weathers and so to retain all of the boards in the corners with an even 6mm gap is pretty much impossible without some kind of restraint behind them - much like the bottom west corner a few posts ago.

So, we decided that on every alternate elevation we would fit a stainless steel strap (which, after a little experimenting we sprayed black so that it didn't glint in the sunlight!) up behind the boards the entire height of the building.