North Wall continued

Sep 2018

         Next step on the north wall was another row of insulation, and then another row of external metal Colorbond cladding. Before we could do this the bottom row of insulation was cut back around the windows for neat and snug fit. Around each window there is a built-in thick black plastic flashing, so this provides extra protection from any rain water getting through the walls. The second row of insulation goes most of the way up to wall, leaving a gap of around 300mm at the top of the wall.

        Then the metal cladding had sections cut out to fit around the windows. These windows have a groove in their frame along the sides and bottom into which the cladding slides. 

There were two pieces of Colorbond cladding which completed the second row, and they overlap in the wide gap between the bedroom and the bathroom window.

 These pieces come almost half-way up the windows.

These were held in place and then screwed to the metal framework with tek-head screws. These screws are all coated with Mountain Blue (trademark) coloured paint so they are perfectly matched to the wall. Unfortunately this paint does chip quite easily when the screw does not go in correctly the first time (which happens quite a lot), so we have accumulated a collection of slightly bad-looking screws which we can re-use somewhere that they aren't too obvious.

For the third row of cladding we were unable to just cut out sections to slide around the windows as the cladding was unable to slide over itself while being tight inside the groove, due to the corrugations. This meant that we had to cut two pieces to go between the windows, slide one in sideways first and screw it to the frame, and then slide the second one in with an overlap to the first one and screw it to the frame.

 Two pieces between the kitchen and bathroom windows, two pieces between the bathroom and bedroom windows, and one piece at each end on the outside of the windows meant there were six pieces making up the third row. 

These pieces come up about 200mm above each window.

To complete the north wall became very tricky at this point since it involved a special top-of-wall channel, the inclusion of eaves and somehow cutting back the fourth row to fit over the windows, so it was put on hold while we moved on to the west wall. First we had to put a tiny short piece of Colorbond about 70mm high underneath the glass sliding door, of course it had insulation put behind it first.

On the right hand side of the sliding glass door, we stuck up a length of insulation, then screwed on a panel of cladding.

Then we stuck up more insulation to finish that side and above the door, and screwed on another row of cladding.

At this point we stuck up a row of insulation on the left hand side of the door, and then screwed on a row of cladding. We were actually quite reluctant to put a wall onto this section, as it had been very handy to just reach through the wall to put or grab tools or water bottles while we were working. After the wall was up though, we quickly got used to the new situation and did not miss the convenience too much.

And then a third row of cladding was screwed on the right hand side of the door. Starting to look pretty good!