Fall Pinterest Challenge: Tin Siding
I’m linking up to another Pinterest Challenge today. Last time I tackled the chalkboard “blacksplash” (you can see that here).
In case you are new to this, here’s a quick rundown. The Pinterest Challenge is simple: Actually *do* something you recently pinned. There is no theme, no difficulty-level expectations, nothing. Just try something.
While Katie Bower is quick to point out that Pinterest has no idea about this event she and Sherry hold, it’s safe to assume Ben Silbermann, the founder of Pinterest, would be all about it. As he mentioned in his Alt Summit keynote speech, the whole point of Pinterest is to encourage people to get out and DO; that’s what sets it apart from a lot of the internet. Rather than hoping to keep people sitting inside surfing away, Pinterest is supposed to inspire people to actually do the things they see online. This Challenge really gets to the essence of Pinterest.
The third structure at Camp Davis (our home-away-from-home in West Virginia) is little more than a glorified shed. The outside is only half-finished, with bare plywood showing. The inside isn’t any better. Again, the floors are all plywood, only half the walls are drywalled and the ceiling is completely exposed (and not in the hip way). So yeah, it’s pretty much a shed right now. But one day we hope for it to become a real living room type space (with couches and day beds and plenty of space for our big family to gather.
With my Dad’s help we’ve begun the transformation. First up was replacing the old tin roof – which leaked quite badly, as the pitch of the roof is too low for such material. With a new roof in place the rest of the structure is now worth tackling.
We were careful in removing the old tin roof, as Natalie and I had the crazy idea of re-using it as siding. At first this felt like a bit of a pie-in-the-sky idea, and we weren’t even sure if tin siding was a thing people did.
I soon discovered that not only was tin a proper siding material, it is also a rather traditional method to use. Pinterest showed me the light:
You can see the rest of our Pinboard for the soon-to-be “Tin Can” living room space here. You can catch up on some of my previous posts about the space here and here.
We started by removing this window, which was neither plumb, nor level, nor insulated. The front of the space is covered in windows, so this little guy wasn’t much of a loss.
The plan is to only replace the areas without siding. That means we’re leaving the barn red T1-11 in place for half the building. We added 2x4s under the drip-edge of our new roof to help us frame the wall a bit.
Before long we had the house wrap in place (the courtyard was a bit of a disaster area throughout the process):
Then we were cutting corrugated metal (a lovely sound, I might add), and drilling it up in place. Here is the completed first side:
We still have a lot of work to do before we can really enjoy this space (and the siding needs to go up on two more sides). But I love the progress we’re making, and I’m too proud of how it is turning out not to share it.
