Exterior trim, oh how I hate thee

In my past life I don't think I ever noticed a piece of exterior trim. I noticed siding, windows, roofing material, etc., but I don't think I ever looked at a house and said "Nice trim". Now I must also shamefully admit that I should have been paying attention to trim, as it is something that Matt has spent a lot of his professional life installing. I've listened to him talk about it, even looked at sketches he has drawn in an effort to make me understand how cool something he has been working on looked. But payback is hell, and now my every waking moment revolves around trim, and I hate it. It is tedious, I still don't really care that much about it, and it takes forever to install. Or at least ours does, but that might just be because Matt is a perfectionist. So this past weekend, just like the weekend before and the weekend to come, we installed trim. But we had some help. Matt Brown made a return appearance, as did my sister, who flew down all the way from NYC for the weekend just to help.

Me and my sister Sarah Ellen trimming the front window.

More trim, it never ends.
And of course, the only thing more fun than trim was removing five headers with the saw-zaw. Somehow, during the translation from design phase to order phase to delivery phase for windows, 40 inch became 4.0 Ft., so our rough openings weren't sufficient. No one knows how that happened, but I have a sneaky suspicion that I somehow screwed up, so I offered to take out all of the offending headers (with the help of Sarah Ellen).

New Pics (1 of 2)

As promised, lots of new pictures! It was a big weekend with a lot of excitement, both the good kind and the not so good adrenaline pumping, why in the world are we doing this kind. We did, however, make quite a bit of progress this weekend.

1)It took four of us to unload the new beam on Friday and then four again on Sat. to lift it into place. Well worth it as we think the new beam and new porch look fabulous!!

2) We have windows!!! Or at least some windows. Matt let me (i.e. helped me) put in the kitchen windows in a very chivalrous effort to make me feel like progress was being made on the house and that we were not going to spend the rest of our lives working on the roof.

New Pics (2 of 2)

3) We have framed in the last exterior wall, a small bump out with french doors. This bump out will have a small shed roof, and the rafters are already cut. This is the LAST section of roof, and one small enough that it can be framed, plywooded, and tarpapered in a matter of hours.

4) Speaking of roofs, we also spent half a day working on the tar paper in all of the valleys in order to ensure that there are no leaks whatsoever. While we realize that the primary waterproofness of a roof comes from the actual roofing material, we figured it couldn't hurt. And it worked. It worked really, really well. How do I know this? Because Monday night we had one of the worst thunderstorms ever. Lightning and thunder all around the tent, the creek rising like crazy right beside us, and us knowing that at any moment lightning would strike a tree near us and it would come crashing down on the tent. Made for a fun night. Below is what the creek looked like this morning when we finally emerged.