Work Day, Saturday

Yesterday, Andrew and I arrived at the construction site around 8:00 am. The volunteer group for the day was an alumni group from Cal Poly. They were a great group of people!
We were asked to continue framing the garage that we had started the day before. We worked on it, but didn't finish still because Andrew left a little before the lunch break. I didn't feel comfortable or able to finish that job by myself, so I joined an all female team putting siding on the back of the house. We were all working on Lot 3 yesterday, except a few people who were laying out the marks for where the walls will go on Lot 1 (Explanation of Lot numbers in previous blog post, "We are Lot 4")

This is what siding is. We had to cut the pieces to fit, lengthwise and then put them exactly in the right place on top of the piece below it with 1/8th of an inch gap on each side, making sure it was straight and level. Then drill the holes and nail it into the wall. There were three people working together on each wall. It was actually pretty easy, and fun, although we had a very easy wall to do. The other wall had a lot of piping, or water spouts, or other things jutting out of the wall that they had to cut pieces out of the siding for it to fit into place. I'm glad I learned on an easy wall. :)

This is the siding cutter. It looks like it would cut the pieces like a table saw, but it actually snips the piece. Its very quiet and cuts with a quick little "snip." Pretty cool! I should mention, the siding is not wood, its actually more like cement board. Its texturized to look like wood on the outside, but it isn't really wood.

After lunch, we continued the siding and had to set up scaffolding to reach. By the end of the work day, the siding, on our wall, was completed all the way up to the bottom of the second story. I assume when work begins again on Tuesday, the scaffolding will need to be extended so the next crew can continue the siding up to the roof line. 

Siding is a pretty fun job. I'm glad to have learning it! I may be doing more of it soon! :)

Less than 140 hours left!!! It would be awesome if we got 40 hours in this week and had less than 100 left by next weekend.....we'll see how the week goes!