First siding boards are up

After a week and half of part-time work, we now have about 25 feet of siding boards put up.

The going is pretty slow sometimes because of the difficulty of cutting the boards to fit around the windows. After a few mistakes and a fair amount of fiddling with test boards, we now have a pretty decent method for doing the difficult bits, but it still takes lots of measuring and cutting. At the rate we are going, it will probably take us a month to get the whole house done.

We stained all the boards before putting them up (thanks so much to all the helpers who came by for our painting parties!). We were a little worried about the color, which was a 50/50 mix of two different colors (one beige and one cedar). But it turned out really well, and the result is a natural looking, slightly reddish color that glows nicely when the morning sun hits it. We’ll probably add trim around the edges at some point, stained with a contrasting color (either a darker brown to match the roof or a forest green).