Soffit Update

We spent the long weekend at the house working on our long list of projects. The weather was spectacular with only a gusty wind making dealing with the lightweight aluminum soffit panels a real challenge. Carol kept busy putting the finish coat of white exterior latex on the exterior door and window trim. We chose to use LP Smartside trim products for the trim and fascia on our house. Smartside is a great product utilizing what would otherwise be scrap wood fibre and strands, bonding it together with a treated resin to prevent rot and insect damage, embedding a wood texture to the surface (smooth texture is also available) and then coating it with a latex primer to ensure excellent paint adhesion. The trim boards come 16 feet long and are a little cumbersome to move around, but because there are no knots or defects, the entire length is usable. We set up a little paint shop in the basement, enabling Carol to paint 6 lengths of the board at a time, supported on our homemade saw horses. Over the weekend, she managed to get about a third of it done.
Meanwhile, I was struggling with the soffit installation. Not a horrible job, but certainly a fiddly one, and one that is performed at the top of the outside walls. Of course, this is accomplished while working on a ladder or two. The idea is to install "J Track" to the side of the house and under the rafter tails and then cut and fit the ventilated aluminum soffit material to fit in the tracks - not too tight though, to allow for expansion and contraction, but tight enough that it doesn't fall out of the tracks. It sounds so simple doesn't it? Well, I have to say that I'm developing a healthy respect for all the tradespeople out there. Over the three days I managed to get about 1/3 of the job done. Understand that this is the easy 1/3 - none of the gable ends have been attempted yet and they are by far the most complicated parts of the whole job. I am getting much more efficient at it though, and should be up to the task for the rest of the job.
Robin at Groundwater Systems promised me that the water system would be completed and tested yesterday. We will see as I am headed up there this afternoon.

We picked up the sink, vanity and mirror for the main floor bathroom this morning. We will get it installed over the next day or so...yay!