Preparing the Garage and Finishing the House Exterior

When it comes to finishing a chimney there are a lot of options.  You can use stone, brick, or siding which is what we chose to do.  Although log siding may not be the best looking way to finish off a chimney it certainly is one of the easiest.  The reason we chose this method was that from the front of the house only about 12" of the chimney is visible and once the siding is stained it will blend into the roof anyway so this seemed easier, cheaper, faster and way more convenient than going through all the work of cultured stone or brick.  This is the back side and you can see that not much actually shows from the front of the house.  This completes the exterior work for this year.

Now for the most important space in this entire project.... The Garage.   The first thing we needed to do was move and re-organize the entire area so we will have enough room to cut finish materials this winter and also store our vehicles inside during inclement weather.

Our garage is split into two distinct areas.  The "parking" side and the "Shop" side.  The first order of business was to move all the boxes of household stuff from the shop into the house where it belongs.  This gave us room to move all my "car stuff" that was in one side of the parking area into the shop area.  All this stuff will stay packed till the house is finished.  We took enough time to stack stuff so we could work around it while installing electrical outlets and the like.  We also stacked everything so that tools could be reached if needed, even though most of them are "automotive" specific.  Now we have room to park in the "parking area" finally.

This is the "parking" side of the garage.  Now that all my shop stuff is out of there we have room for the "boss's" car...... and my unfinished project truck of course.

The shop area of the garage has two parking bays as well.  It took us about three days to re-stack all the interior finish materials so that we can easily get too whatever we need when necessary.  Here you see about 3000 linear feet of finish boards including a full pallet of tongue and groove.

We also brought in our exterior door and window finish  materials.  This material will be used to trim out the doors and windows next spring before we stain the exterior.  Now that we have the room in the garage it just made sense to bring this material inside so it will be protected from the weather.

All the finish materials took up one entire bay in the shop area.  The other bay will be used to do cutting.   This picture is a little deceiving but just so you'll know,  the garage door in the picture is 8' high and 18' wide.  There really is a lot of room to work in there.

Once everything had been moved and organized it was time to finally build some stairs from the house into the garage.  One of the modifications we made to the house in general was to raise the roof of the garage 3'.  This was done to even out the soffit where it meets the house and it also gives the garage a "barn" look which is really what we wanted.  Because of this modification we had a 5' drop from the floor of the house to the floor of the garage.   So..... a set of stairs was definitely in order, especially since we've been using a step ladder for the last 16 months.   These stairs are being constructed using excess material that was left over from the basic house construction.  Kuhns Bros. usually provides more than you'll need to build the house so there's always enough material left over to do little jobs like this.

These stairs were built exactly like the stairs on all the porches including railings and balusters.

Here is the finished product.  Now it's on to the "shop" stairs.

Our original plan called for a door from the shop section onto the back porch.  In many areas of the country an exterior door (other than a garage door) is required by building code so this door served to meet that requirement.  It will also provide additional ventilation when I'm doing body work and painting in the shop area later.  These stairs were built the same way as all the rest and were constructed using excess material just as the stairs in the "parking" area.

Halfway through the stairs building process we had a cold snap with about 8" of snow.   This is one of the reasons we love living in the mountains.

The snow did slow us down some.  With temperatures in the low teens at night and wind chills around zero we did take some time off to stay warm.  The garage is not heated or insulated yet so it was pretty darn cold while doing some of the work out there.

This weather was a bit unusual for November.  We normally don't get this much snow until late December or January.  After 4 days ....... most of it is gone.

That's it for this month.  Now that Thanksgiving is over we have a good two to three weeks to work before the Christmas holidays.  We will start by electrifying the garage.  As you could tell by several of the pictures this month it gets kind of dark in the garage with the doors closed so we will be hooking up our axillary electrical panel in the shop area, installing lighting and electrifying all the outlets this month.  Beginning in January we'll start the installation of finish materials inside the house. Have a happy holiday season and Merry Christmas to all!

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