This is where my labors are ripening into the delicious fruits that had only been a figment of my imagination.
Cedar bevel siding was used for my exterior finish with 1x4 trim boards around windows and 1x6 trim boards at the corners and the fascia of the roof line. 1x4 trim was used for the corners of the utility shed since it seemed to be a better proportioned option. The cedar bevel siding is 7 1/4" wide, and when overlapped, left a 6" reveal. Each board was stained twice on the back side and three times on the finished face. I designed a system of a second colored bevel siding board to break up the monotony of a single color and to give my house some character. I used Cedar Wet Wood Stain by Diamond Line for the base color and Mahogany Stain by Ecos for my accent color (the Ecos is actually a water based paint). The mahogany color was choose to compliment the Tuscany color of my roofing material. It couldn't have worked out better in my mind. I literally stained wood for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 6 weeks to complete all of the finish boards. I nailed the siding with 2" galvanized spiral shank nails at every stud. All joints of the siding were angled at 45 degrees instead of just butting up the flat ends of the siding against each other. This allows the stained wood to always show a cleaner look, even when the material expands and contracts during temperature changes.
Some say that cedar will react to Tyvek, especially if water is in contact with both materials. I'll installed my siding directly to the house wrap per the building plans that I used. I'm hoping that everything is flashed tight and staining the back side of my siding will prevent a reaction. Here's Dupont's website concerning cedar installed over house wrap:
http://www.dupont.com/content/dam/assets/products-and-services/construction-materials/assets/BI_US_Cedar_and_Tyvek.pdf
The other options is to use furring strips between the house wrap and cedar siding. This will increase the width of the tiny house and slightly reduce interior space. Here's 'Real Cedars' recommendation to install any of their types of cedar siding over Tyvek. I wasn't aware of any of this information until my siding was complete.
http://www.realcedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/installingsiding.pdf
An issue that wrecked my build time was my miter saw. It's a Dewalt 10" miter saw. The bevel material is 7 1/2" wide which my saw would only cut 7" across. I had to flip every piece of siding and cut it from the other direction. The extra $150 would for a 12" miter saw would of save me a couple full days of construction. Try to get clear on all of your materials, and if you can, buy the tool that is going to be most accommodating. A second thing that slowed down the process was cutting the siding to fit snug. Since the material price was somewhat high and I spent hours putting coats of stain on them, I always made my cuts a little long at first and slowly shaved off the final eighth or so of material. The exterior was painstakingly a tedious process. I now understand why this is called a craftsman house.
The windows were trimmed out with 1x4 cedar and mitered at a 45 for the corner connections. See the 'Windows' section for details about the windows and flashing methods. About an 1/8" need to be ripped off the backside of the trim that went over the window. This is because the flange of the window comes out about an 1/8". The rip helps the trim board hold flush with the house and the mitered corners connect cleaner.
Cedar bevel siding was used for my exterior finish with 1x4 trim boards around windows and 1x6 trim boards at the corners and the fascia of the roof line. 1x4 trim was used for the corners of the utility shed since it seemed to be a better proportioned option. The cedar bevel siding is 7 1/4" wide, and when overlapped, left a 6" reveal. Each board was stained twice on the back side and three times on the finished face. I designed a system of a second colored bevel siding board to break up the monotony of a single color and to give my house some character. I used Cedar Wet Wood Stain by Diamond Line for the base color and Mahogany Stain by Ecos for my accent color (the Ecos is actually a water based paint). The mahogany color was choose to compliment the Tuscany color of my roofing material. It couldn't have worked out better in my mind. I literally stained wood for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 6 weeks to complete all of the finish boards. I nailed the siding with 2" galvanized spiral shank nails at every stud. All joints of the siding were angled at 45 degrees instead of just butting up the flat ends of the siding against each other. This allows the stained wood to always show a cleaner look, even when the material expands and contracts during temperature changes.
Some say that cedar will react to Tyvek, especially if water is in contact with both materials. I'll installed my siding directly to the house wrap per the building plans that I used. I'm hoping that everything is flashed tight and staining the back side of my siding will prevent a reaction. Here's Dupont's website concerning cedar installed over house wrap:
http://www.dupont.com/content/dam/assets/products-and-services/construction-materials/assets/BI_US_Cedar_and_Tyvek.pdf
The other options is to use furring strips between the house wrap and cedar siding. This will increase the width of the tiny house and slightly reduce interior space. Here's 'Real Cedars' recommendation to install any of their types of cedar siding over Tyvek. I wasn't aware of any of this information until my siding was complete.
http://www.realcedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/installingsiding.pdf
An issue that wrecked my build time was my miter saw. It's a Dewalt 10" miter saw. The bevel material is 7 1/2" wide which my saw would only cut 7" across. I had to flip every piece of siding and cut it from the other direction. The extra $150 would for a 12" miter saw would of save me a couple full days of construction. Try to get clear on all of your materials, and if you can, buy the tool that is going to be most accommodating. A second thing that slowed down the process was cutting the siding to fit snug. Since the material price was somewhat high and I spent hours putting coats of stain on them, I always made my cuts a little long at first and slowly shaved off the final eighth or so of material. The exterior was painstakingly a tedious process. I now understand why this is called a craftsman house.
The windows were trimmed out with 1x4 cedar and mitered at a 45 for the corner connections. See the 'Windows' section for details about the windows and flashing methods. About an 1/8" need to be ripped off the backside of the trim that went over the window. This is because the flange of the window comes out about an 1/8". The rip helps the trim board hold flush with the house and the mitered corners connect cleaner.
Some special methods were used to trim out the door and the utility shed. I joined the trim around the door with the window and the corner of the house. I also use a continuous trim board above the door and the window. It was a bit challenging since the wall was out of square and the door needed to be level to operate correctly, thus causing me to cut the length of trim at an angle. Just about every board that was used to trim out the utility shed had compound miter cuts and an assortment of rips.
The final task for my exterior finish was the soffits under the roof over hangs. I used 1x6 tongue and groove for the soffits at the roof over hang on the end of my roof. 1x10 cedar was used at the overhand from my loft roof over the main room roof in the middle of the house. I used a V router bit to rout out groves in the 1x10 cedar to mimic the tongue and groove look.