Siding Skirting Install - Thursday

Woke up to a beautiful day and I did a little wandering around the farm. It is such a massive difference from what I grew up in and where we live now. It is a bit astounding just HOW flat it is here in North central North Dakota. The old joke that you can watch your dog run away for miles or see someone coming from the same is really true. I can see cars coming along the roads and they are 3, 4, 5+ miles away.

I measured on the map and those trees in the distance are 2 miles away and you can see vehicles farther than that. The car in the field is my niece's that she rolled not to long ago. Lucky she didn't get a scratch, especially watching the asphalt zip past her head through the broken driver's side window as the car slid along the road. Her nickname is now "Crash".

We left my SIL's farm around 1pm and got back to my MIL's an hour later.

The prior day while we were all at the farm my MIL asked me if I would do something else for her and once we were back I got on it. Her shed has been built for about 4 years and they got new siding on the house not too long ago which there was leftovers from. My task is to install the siding on the skirting of the shed to help keep debris, animals, and snow out from under the shed. The siding is the perfect height to fit the space on the long sides but I had to make it work the way I needed. The pieces have screw holes all along the one side and a lip on the other so when the siding is installed it over laps the other pieces. Those screw holes normally are on top but I figured out I could turn the siding over so the lip is up and flush against the shed siding.

The siding has pin holes along the lip but they are all on the wrong side. I used the drill to punch holes on the face of the siding to allow me a place to nail in finishing nails to hole the siding in place.

The front side went in quite nicely and looks really good. The gravel scoots up against the bottom to cover the screw holes and the lip gives a nice looking transition between the shed siding and the metal siding.

The other side of the shed the siding went on fairly quickly, after digging the gravel and dirt back.

J gave me a hand on the last piece for the side. He helped to hold the siding in place while I nailed it in place. The boys then spent their time playing outside while I cleaned up to go to our friend's house for dinner. The boys hooked up with one of the neighbor kids as we were leaving and were checking out his hover board.

We had a great evening, well long evening that would be. We got to her house around 6 pm and didn't leave until 2am. Great conversation, food, and lots of catching up with a healthy dose of beer. It'd be nice if we all lived closer for sure since it was @stryeyz's best friend throughout childhood.

Today I am finishing up the skirting on the ends which I have to rip a couple of pieces to fit. I will then chop down corners to cover and will have to notch them to fit accordingly. The family is coming out today for our last day in North Dakota as we will be leaving to head for home tomorrow. I need to go buy my liquor today since it is 2/3 the cost back home, then likely we will pack this evening so tomorrow morning we can try to get out of here by 10am at the latest. We will likely be heading for Butte Montana for the night which is about a 10 hour drive from here. That will give us a nice and mellow 5 hours home on Sunday where we can have the bulk of the day to come down from the trip.