As we pick-up this week's episode, you'll recall that last week the 4'x10' Hardie panel ate our lunch with impunity. So this week, I did what any self respecting do-it-yourself-er would do: Rent an epic power tool, in this case a 35' trailerable boom lift (from Home Depot).
Home Depot doesn't allow rental equipment reservations and when we showed up a the Bothel location early Saturday morning, theirs was already rented out. A quick call to the Snohomish store saved our bacon. (BTW - I like the people at the Snohomish Home Depot -- personable, friendly, kind and helpful.)
We attached the lift to the Sequoia and had a beautiful Saturday morning drive up Highway 2. And enjoyed a dry but cool day working at the cabin...until the rain hit at about 6 pm as we were packing up. We got drenched packing up and had some fits and starts getting the trailer lift reattached to the Sequoia.
The pictures not shown (and not taken) are of us wrestling with this trailerable behmoth to get it positioned close enough to the Haus. Had to take a mulligan on the first false start because the lift only swivels fully in one direction. Our driveway has an area where a car can pull through and loop around, across our drainfield and on to the neighbors driveway, but it's TIGHT. We didn't have a lot of room to maneuver, so we got the lift generally close to where we wanted it, then had to lift and push it in to position -- less than easy on dirt and gravel. I'm sore today from doing deadlifts with the tongue of the trailer.
I positioned the basket just above the front porch to make entry/egress easier and save time.
Cutting the final trim pieces for the corners.
We placed some 2x4's on the railing of the basket to serve as a sort of forklift for carrying the heavy panels until we could get them in to position. In the end, the 4'x10' piece of Hardie panel still proved too heavy and unwieldy for us to put successfully put in place, even though we tried. We finally elected to cut the panel in half. The smaller pieces went up easily -- only a slight compromise on the overall aesthetic. And I have to say, that not having to carry those pieces up and down a ladder was a blessing.
No mishaps navigating the bucket.
Fastening the cut-in-half top panel.
The obligatory shot looking down.
Is that a worried look?
Mounting the final top pieces to cover sofits -- a one-man job.
Notice that Katie donned the down jacket after the clouds came in.
Mounting corner trim.
Ugh. As I look at the picture above,
I see that we forgot mount the Hardie panel pieces between the windows.... Aarg!
We arrived back at the Snohomish Home Depot at about 8:15, grabbed a mediocre sandwich from the Arby's drive through on our way out, and arrived home just before 9:00 pm tired and wet -- probably our longest work day this year.
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