S.O.S. Part 1

Betcha can't guess what the s.o.s stands for!  I'll save you the mental energy, it's Friday, you're gonna need that brain to get through the day.

S.O.S. = Salvaging Our Soffits

 Before we can put new siding on the front of the shed, we need to install the soffits.  In an unending attempt to salvage any of the old material we have, both for aesthetic reasons and budget reasons, we hope we've come up with a decent solution.

Normally plywood is ripped into appropriate sizes and tacked up.  So you get a really flat look.  I think that looks fine on a house.  But we aren't trying to make this look like a house, we want this shed to have as much character that we can possibly squeeze out of it since we'll be staring at it every time we go to the backyard or look out the window.  We are going for a nice balance of old and new.  That can be a tough line to walk because you don't want old to translate into "junk."

I found myself eyeing our stack of excess lumber left over from the original roof.

My father in law had already painstakingly pulled all the nails because we knew we could use this stuff somewhere down the line.  We just didn't know it would be this soon so we had already put it up up and away in storage.

The Mr. assured me it would work just fine.

Brent did his measuring thangity thang to figure out how we were going to install it.  I pretended to understand and smiled and nodded.  

We took our 1x6 salvaged spruce and ripped it into 1 1/2" strips to use as blocking, so we'd have something to tack the soffit to.  Safety glasses make any project sexier.

Then we cut a bunch of the 1x6's at 21" long to create the soffit.  I giggled with glee as he started putting them up, this was gonna be perfect!!

My original plan was to prime and paint the soffit white to match the future trim.  Now I am really leaning toward leaving the spruce in its natural tone.  I think the contrast under there is going to be fantastic!  

If you can envision the siding color a vanilla ice cream color (which matches our house) and then the piece of wood I'm holding up in this next picture will be white trim that lines the inside peak...

Hopefully after we get the siding up we will have a better idea of whether it should be painted or left natural.  Feel free to comment with your opinion!

The next brain buster is figuring out how we are going to transition the soffit on the front peak into the soffit that runs along the sides of the building at the corner...shown in this picture

As soon as we (by "we" I mean Brent) get that hammered out, we can post part 2 with the finished soffit.