Troy and Gary Ellis came by as promised to help on the vexing soffit. I had installed about 100 ft of it, but had another 150 ft to go and it wasn't going to happen very fast. They showed up on Tuesday and worked most of the week, so the job should be finished next week (Tuesday). Gary cuts and Troy fits and nails. The soffit has two forms. 1) is the gable section, which consists of 2 ft tongue and groove cedar that butts directly into the house. This is pretty easy to lay up. The other form (2) runs parallel to the house and slopes upward. First you nail up a 3" wide board, then a 2" section of screen for air movement. This is followed by four tongue and groove boards, the last of which is a real bitch to fit into place. The gap has to be <1/4" wide or the shingles won't cover it. Then there are several places where the two soffit types collide at compound angles. Then add a half dozen corbels, one of which is 27 ft in the air and you have a recipe for disaster (on my part). I haven't seen the bill yet, but they worked 9 weeks on the house with a helper which netted out at about $5k per week. I suspect that's what it will take to finish the soffit, corbels, and a few other finish framing details.
While all this was going on I busied myself with finishing the speaker layout, installing the hood fan (with Levi Ross), putting in the gutter drainage lines (4" pipe), adding blocking for toilet paper holders, wall mounted TVs, and hold bars in the showers. Oh yeah, I also spent 2 hours installing a fire stop in the chimney chase. If I had been about half my size and a contortionist it would have been a lot faster and easier, but I'm neither of those things.This weekend and Labor Day will be spent cleaning out the house for the insulators and drywallers. The insulation should go in on Tues-Thursday and the drywall starting on Friday. I figure about 4-5 days to lay the drywall, and an equal amount of time to tape and mud it. Frank the Drywaller said we have 16,000 sq. ft of drywall, which equates to 333 sheets of 4'x12' drywall and about a mile (5,300 ft) of taping!
