I’ve got the knack with cladding now and managed to get a lot more up in a couple of hours this afternoon.
cladding top tips
- It is impossible to keep the corner pieces together when you nail the boards up unless you brace them first. I found this out the hard way. In the end I used the little white connecting blocks you use in kitchen units.
- Fit the corner pieces together before fixing the cladding to the stud work. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? I found this out the hard way too.
- Specify the lengths of cladding you need…
… mine came in a rough assortment of lengths between 5-6M, and – since the walls need about 2.1M per vertical length – I am left with a load of not very useful bits of around 1M length. Much of this will get used in the soffits and above the windows and doors, but I have small gap on the LHS that can only be filled with an hodgepodge of bits. Thus a trip back to the timber merchant beckons for the last few bits.
last big delivery
a minor milestone, and something of a relief, the last bulky item was delivered today (plasterboard). It is a relief because the road outside my house is very narrow, so most of the large lorries have to be parked round the corner. The end result is a lot of carrying – which I have to say has always been borne with very good humour by the drivers – or short term chaos as we unload. Either way a bit of a palaver, and it it is nice not to have to worry about that any more.
