Tag Archives: siding

Scenes from the Yard: December 2015

We love this rural tropical life. Here are a few fun photos from this past week or so.

Rainbow
Rainstorms and rainbows falling into the sea

Kitty on the bridge
Kitty on the catwalk

Siding Cabin
Siding on the cabin is looking really good! (And who is that handsome turkey on the deck?)

Iguana in banana tree
Iguana in a red banana tree

Fern
Wild fern

Cassie and Cow
This loose cow has been just hanging out on the property

Laser Cat and Cow
Laser cow and cat stare-down

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Exciting Siding!

The siding for the cabin has been an ongoing project for quite a few months. The first issue with it was simply deciding what type of siding to use. We really didn’t want to use T-111 as siding if we could avoid it at all. It is just sort of a cheesy, cheap material (that’s still sort of expensive) and to me it is just not the style aesthetically that I would prefer. So we looked into ordering various types of siding online, but the cost to ship something like ipe siding was more than the siding itself!

Cabin progress
This cabin needs some siding!

So we were back to trying to find materials on the island. We have seen a few of the older style Puerto Rican houses with horizontal lap siding and we liked how this looked. A rustic sort of style that would go good on a cabin hidden in the jungle. So then the question was where to buy it, and indeed if it could be found anymore. It was not at Home Depot, National or any of the closeby hardware stores. We found one place listed in San Juan, but to save our sanity we would really prefer not to have drive there (but if need be we were trying to steel ourselves for it).

Commercial Toro
You have arrived at Comerical Toro! Woohoo

After a treasure hunt of sorts with clues from one hardware store and friends to try this or that, we finally ended up at Comercial Toro in Cabo Rojo. This is probably where we should have started for anything wood related. In fact, all the wood from the old wood house was marked from 1990/Comercial Toro. They mill some stuff and also pressure treat the wood themselves. It’s a huge facility!

Siding
With the chanfles in Cabo Rojo

We found out that in Spanish they call these boards chanfles or in English drop siding. We ordered up a bunch (hopefully enough) and they delivered them in a few days. Then the prep work came. Before we could put up the siding we needed to put in all the windows and also the trim and paint everything.

Unpainted pile Painting chanfles
Piles to be painted

Britton and pile Siding and trim
Trim and siding

Trim for cabin
Britton installing trim while a turkey inspector pecks around

Finally this week we began putting on the first few boards of actual siding! Exciting! It’s looking pretty good too! There’s a learning curve to all of this, so Britton is starting from the back and working his way to the front. The really challenging part will be the “tall side” of the house where there is no deck and it is about 20 feet off the ground. We may need Waldemar-the-Fearless’s help on that part!

Siding
First few rows of siding on the back

Chanfles and Britton
And then a few more!

Otherwise things are going well. When we’re not working on the cabin we’ve been playing music and hanging out with friends. Life’s good.

Pool Bar John Noll
Went to see our friend’s band, Superluna, debut at Pool’s Bar

Cassie and palms
And stopped by Step’s Beach for a bit

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