Flooring and Tiling (Continued)

The flooring has taken about 30 man hours to do so far, and we're about 3 hours from being done. We used reused flooring, so it was slightly harder than using new flooring. We have laid approximately 500 sq ft.

I've been doing this with my father, who has been cutting the wood pieces to length. Meanwhile, I've been installing the pieces.

Deb has been doing the tiling. She says that the process so far has taken about 24 hours. But, as you can see, she's included a lot of artistic flare, using many smaller tiles, which takes much longer than a conventional tile job.

The Beginning of the Long Haul

Over the last couple weeks, we've been painting the interior walls like mad and working on the siding. The electrical was installed so now there's ample lights to work at night as well as during the day.

The work that happens after the foundation, framing and drywall, seems to go a lot slower than the first phase. Since my overall project funds are now pretty low, I will be doing more of the work myself. We're gunning for a September 1st move-in date.


This video is a status update of where things are in the project.

Cedar Shingle Siding

In Portland, one component of the ADU regulation is that the siding, roof pitch, and eave style, must match that of the main house. In my case, the main house has an 'imitation-cedar-shingle' asbestos siding with a 10 3/4" reveal (the height between each course of shingles).

While the City did not want me to put asbestos siding on my house, they did still require that the reveal on the ADU match the main house. Since the main house siding was "imitation cedar shingles", we chose to use real cedar shingles on the ADU. The picture here shows the new cedar shingles with a 10 3/4" reveal to match the reveal on the main house. 

Here's a video of the shingle pallets arriving from a local lumber manufacturer. The shingles are Western Red Cedar shingles from Washington state.



This next video shows the Vortex rain screen and the cedar shingle sealing process.

The Vortex which will cover our Siga wrap, and will allow rain to drain down the side of the house in case the rain gets behind the siding.

We purchased "green" shingles, meaning that they were milled recently. I bought these shingles because they were 1/3rd the cost of kiln-dried and pre-primed lumber. Because the wood is freshly cut however, there is a greater chance that when the shingles sit in direct sunlight for too long, they will start to bow and or turn grey quickly. In order to abate this process, we added a wood sealant called Penofin.



This is a video of the first shingle going into place and an explanation of the double course of shingles that we're using.



By the end of the day, we finished installing a small patch of siding on the west side of the ADU. We started shingling on the west side, the side with the least foot traffic, to perfect the process before we wrap the rest of the ADU.

It is fairly common to paint cedar shingles but I have no intention of doing that. I am thrilled with how the first section of siding looks. I also look forward to years of color and texture variance that will unfold and emerge over time due to UV exposure, rain, and age.