Continuing the Sun Room Exterior

Waaaaay back last year we started to restore the casement windows in the sun room. The windows were in terrible shape and required a lot more work than what we originally thought. It seems that the windows were held together with the many thick coats of paint they had received over the years. This is a photo of the windows after we removed the paint.The paint covered rot, cracks, loose muntin bars, and loose tenons. Through the power of glue and wood epoxy we were able to bring the casement windows back from near death. This is what the windows look like on the back side of the sun room.One of the other problems with the sun room was the nonconformity between the three sets of windows on the front and back of the sun room. Also the windows were not trimmed out in the same fashion as the rest of the house. Notice the two different sizes of windows in the photo above. The photo below shows how the windows throughout the house are trimmed out on the exterior.So first on the list to remedy this was to rebuild the window jambs so that the windows could be mullioned together. Here is a photo after the shingles were removed but before the new jambs were installed.The photo below shows the new jambs and the start of the sill repairs.We also needed to rework the sills to make it appear as one long sill instead of three small sills. We not only added wood between the three sills but also about four inches to each end of the sill. We cut down a 4 X 4 post to the correct thickness plus about 1/16th of an inch so that we could sand the piece to the exact size once it was in place. Wood glue and a hidden nail held the piece in place. When all is said and done....R will add a small bracket underneath and hidden from view to reinforce the patch. FYI....that is not the hidden nail but an old nail that we could not remove so R countersunk it so we could putty over it.We then trimmed out the windows in the same fashion as the rest of the house trying the best we could to keep the same reveal. The trim measured 4 1/2 inches so we needed to rip about an inch off a 1 X 6. We then used the discarded piece to build up the one edge to give the illusion of a 2 X 4 1/2 which is what is used on the rest of the house. I then sanded off the sharp factory edge on the new wood to make sure the new work blended with 72 year old wood. Once all the trim work was complete we could start shingling.

This is where we were at in the project at the end of the day on Friday. Saturday was beautiful and set a new record of 66 degrees a perfect temperature to shingle. Did we shingle..no....we went to a racing banquet so R could receive his Rookie of the Year jacket and his trophy for 10th place in the Michigan Traditional Sprints Racing Series. He is probably the oldest known Rookie of the Year in captivity....LOL. At the ripe old age of 57 he competed against guys in their 20's and 30's with years of dirt sprint car experience. R on the other hand was coming off the asphalt and use to racing modifieds. So we started shingling on Sunday when the temps were barely 50 degrees. Brrrrrrr

We were able to get approximately 1/3 of the shingling completed today before we ran out of daylight.

We are not looking forward to shingling the area where the sun room attaches to the house. I see a lot of customs cuts are in our future. Grrrrrr