Archway and Siding

Once I got the table saw thing sorted out, it was back to working with oak and fir. I'm gearing up to trim the living room and I'm making my own siding for the front porch.

First up, I cut a couple of oak boards down to 1x4 for the two baseboards in the living room. The new table saw managed that pretty well. But, more interesting is the 1x6 for the beam above the archway. I cut the ends at 30 degrees to match the beams on the front and back of the house. I like it.




I found out that if you try to go to a siding store and buy some 1x10, it doesn't even come close to matching the 1x10 siding of 64 years ago. Image that. When I showed the salesman a piece of the old siding for comparison, he suggested that I hire a local company that specializes in recreating millwork for old houses. To which I said, HA, I can do this myself and marched out of there like a man who knows what he is doing. I don't. But, that said, I'm now milling my own 1x10 fir siding. I'm using some left over 1x6 that I bought for the door jams. Good thing I way over estimated how much of that I would need. What I'm doing is ripping the 1x6 down to 1x4.5, then joining them to make 1x9 (which is just right minus the tong-and-groove). The only other thing is to cut a 30 degree bevel on each side and pow: siding. It sounds like a lot of work, but there are only 7 pieces of 53" each. Not so bad.