The saga of the cedar soffit

The saga of the cedar soffit began some months ago when we visited the local mills to find cedar for our soffit.

A soffit is the 'ceiling' that is below the roof on the outside of the house.

Many homes choose a metal or vinyl soffit to finish the space off and that's just fine but we wanted to try something more local and organic.

Here we go....

November 2018 - Planing the cedar for consistent thickness of all boards.

This was HARD work since the boards were covered with sawdust, some of it damp.
Equal amounts of pushing and pulling was required. 

We spent two whole days outside in perfect conditions planing the hundreds of boards.

Boards were then brought inside to finish drying before being cut to specific lengths.

I'm using the jig Jim set up to push each board through with precision accuracy.

A router was used to add a 'bevel', or angle, on all the edges.

The boards were then cut to length using a well thought out spreadsheet listing dimensions. 

After cutting the boards to length Jim checked them for knots that might fall out as the wood continued to cure.

Jim cut grooves on the backs of the boards around any suspect knots.

Hot glue was added, filling the grooves and securing the knot.  It's never seen from the front and works great!

Then we sanded all the boards before Jim coated them with a stain / preservative.

Labour intensive work!

This was after dinner around 9:00 p.m.

Jim painted on the coating then passed each board to me.  

 I laid them out on a variety of shelving to dry for a couple of days before moving them.

Each board was carried upstairs then sorted, identified and labeled by row and position. 

Our small house looked more like an old frontier fort!

The individual boards were nailed up by a professional crew.  Jim and I were  not interested in working on top of 20 foot high scaffolding.  You can see the vent strips which allow air circulation above the insulation and keeps insects out.

The finished product. Sumptuous Cedar Soffits!

Next!

Until then...

Jim and Tricia Bowen